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I^onore  tre  ISal^ac 


'^onott  tre  Balzac 

PRIVATE  LIFE 

VOLUME  X 


LIMITED   TO  ONE   THOUSAND  COMPLETE  COPIES 


NO. 


713 


AT  FELICITE'S 


"Will  you  have  a  cigarette?  Oh!  I  am  con- 
stantly forgetting  that  you  never  sviokc.  Snch  purity 
as  yours  is  so  rare !  It  seems  that  no  hand  save 
that  of  an  Eve  fresh  from  the  hands  of  God  is  fit  to 
caress  the  satin-like  down  upon  your  cheeks." 

Calyste  blushed  and  took  his  place  upon  a  stool ; 
he  did  not  see  the  profoutid  emotion  that  made 
Camille  blush. 


THE  NOVELS 


OF 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC 


NOW  FOR  THE   FIRST   TIME 
COMPLETELY   TRANSLATED   INTO   ENGLISH 


bAa  TRIX 
BY  GEORGE  BURNHAM  IVES 


WITH   Fm:   ETCHINGS    BY  ALFRED   BOILOT,    LOYS-HENRI 

DELTEIL  AND    XAVIER   LE   SUEUR,  AFTER 

PAINTINGS    BY  ADRIEN- 

MOREAU 


IN  ONE  VOLUME 


PRINTED  ONLY  FOR  SUBSCRIBERS  BY 

GEORGE  BARRIE  &  SON,   PHILADELPHIA 


COPYRIGHTED,   1897,  BY  G.  B.  i  SON 


?9 

ml 


BEATRIX 

8 

o 
o 


189945 


TO  SARAH 

In  fine  weather,  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean, where  the  fair  empire  of  your  name  once 
extended,  sometimes  the  sea  discloses,  beneath  its 
transparent  waters,  a  marine  flower,  a  veritable 
masterpiece  of  nature;  its  lace-like  filaments,  tinged 
with  purple,  bistre,  violet,  pink  or  gold,  the  fresh- 
ness of  its  waving  filigree,  its  velvety  tissue,  all 
wither  and  fade  as  soon  as  human  curiosity  draws 
it  forth  and  exposes  it  upon  the  shore  to  the  sun's 
rays.  In  like  manner,  the  sunshine  of  publicity 
would  offend  your  pious  modesty.  And  so,  in  dedi- 
cating this  book  to  you,  I  must  withhold  a  name  that 
certainly  would  be  its  pride;  but,  in  consideration 
of  this  demi-silence,  your  superb  hands  perhaps 
may  bless  it,  your  sublime  brow  may  bend  dreamily 
over  it,  your  eyes,  filled  with  maternal  love,  may 
smile  upon  it,  for  you  will  be  present,  though 
veiled.  Like  that  pearl  of  the  marine  flora,  you 
will  remain  on  the  smooth,  fine,  white  sand  where 
your  lovely  life  blooms  and  expands,  hidden  by 
waves  that  are  transparent  only  for  a  few  friendly 
and  discreet  eyes. 

I  would  have  liked  to  lay  at  your  feet  a  work  in 
harmony  with  your  perfections ;  but,  although  that 
was  impossible,  I  am  able,  as  a  consolation,  to 
gratify  one  of  your  instincts  by  offering  you  some- 
thing to  protect 

De  Balzac 

(3) 


PART  FIRST 
The  Characters 


France,  notably  in  the  province  of  Bretagne,  pos- 
sesses, to  this  day,  some  towns  that  have  remained 
entirely  outside  the  social  movement  that  gives  the 
nineteenth  century  its  distinctive  physiognomy. 
Being  without  swift  and  regular  means  of  commu- 
nication with  Paris,  and  connected  only  by  wretched 
roads  with  the  sub-prefecture  or  the  chief  town  of 
the  department,  these  places  hear  or  watch  the  new 
civilization  pass  like  the  scenes  of  a  play,  they 
marvel  at  it  without  applauding;  and,  whether  be- 
cause they  fear  it  or  because  they  look  contempt- 
uously upon  it,  they  are  faithful  to  the  old  customs, 
whose  stamp  has  clung  to  them.  The  man  who 
should  care  to  travel  about  as  a  moral  archaeologist, 
and  to  study  men  instead  of  rocks,  might  find  a  re- 
flection of  the  age  of  Louis  XV.  in  some  village  of 
Provence,  of  the  age  of  Louis  XIV.  in  the  heart  of 
Poitou,  and  of  still  more  ancient  periods  in  the 
heart  of  Bretagne.  Most  of  these  towns  have  fallen 
from  some  pinnacle  of  splendor  of  which  his- 
torians   do    not    speak,    being  more    intent  upon 

(5) 


6  BEATRIX 

facts  and  dates  than  manners,  but  the  memory  of 
which  still  lives  in  the  memory — as  in  Bretagne, 
where  the  national  character  precludes  forgetfulness 
of  matters  concerning  the  province.  Many  of  these 
towns  have  been  the  capital  of  some  little  feudal 
state,  a  county  or  duchy  conquered  by  the  crown, 
or  divided  among  the  heirs  in  default  of  a  male  line. 
Compelled  to  abandon  their  active  life,  these  heads 
became  arms.  The  arm,  deprived  of  nourishment, 
dries  up  and  withers.  During  the  last  thirty  years, 
however,  these  portraits  of  bygone  ages  are  begin- 
ning to  be  effaced  and  are  becoming  rare.  By  work- 
ing for  the  masses,  modern  industrial  appliances  are 
fast  supplanting  the  creations  of  old-fashioned  skill, 
whose  labors  concerned  the  consumer  as  well  as  the 
artisan  individually.  We  have  products  now,  we 
no  longer  have  works.  The  monumental  structures 
count  for  half  in  these  retrospective  phenomena. 
But  from  the  standpoint  of  modern  industry,  the 
stone  quarries,  the  saltpetre  mines  and  the  cotton 
factories  are  monumental  structures.  A  few  years 
more  and  these  cities  of  long  ago  will  be  transformed 
and  will  be  heard  of  no  more  except  in  literary 
iconography  of  this  sort. 

One  of  the  towns  in  which  the  physiognomy  of 
feudal  times  is  most  correctly  preserved  is  Guerande. 
The  name  alone  will  awaken  countless  memories  in 
the  minds  of  painters,  artists,  thinkers,  who  may 
have  traveled  to  that  part  of  the  coast  where  this 
magnificent  gem  of  feudality  is  situated,  command- 
ing such  a  superb  view  of  the  sea-beaches  and  the 


BEATRIX  7 

dunes  occupying,  as  it  were,  the  apex  of  a  triangle, 
the  two  other  corners  of  which  are  formed  by  two 
other  no  less  interesting  gems,  Le  Croisic  and  the 
village  of  Batz.  After  Guerande,  Vitre  in  the  cen- 
tre of  Bretagne  and  Avignon  in  the  South  are  the 
only  places  that  preserve  their  Middle  Ages  atmos- 
phere intact  in  the  midst  of  our  epoch.  To  this  day, 
Guerande  is  surrounded  by  its  strong  walls;  its 
great  canals  are  still  full  of  water,  its  battlements 
are  entire,  its  loopholes  are  not  blocked  up  with 
shrubs,  the  ivy  has  not  thrown  a  mantle  about  its 
square  or  round  towers.  It  has  three  gates  at  which 
the  portcullis  rings  can  be  seen,  and  you  can  enter 
only  by  passing  over  an  iron-bound  wooden  draw- 
bridge which  is  no  longer  raised,  but  which  can  be 
raised  at  need.  The  mayor  was  blamed,  in  1820, 
for  planting  poplars  along  the  canals  to  shade  the 
pathway.  The  answer  was  that,  a  hundred  years 
before,  the  long  and  attractive  esplanade  of  the  for- 
tifications on  the  sand  dune  side,  which  seem  to 
have  been  completed  only  yesterday,  had  been  con- 
verted into  a  mall  shaded  with  elm  trees,  beneath 
which  the  inhabitants  enjoyed  themselves  exceed- 
ingly. The  houses  have  undergone  no  change,  have 
grown  no  larger  or  smaller.  Not  one  of  them  has 
felt  the  architect's  hammer  upon  its  front  or  the 
painter's  brush,  or  staggered  under  the  weight  of  an 
additional  story.  They  all  retain  their  primitive 
character.  Some  rest  upon  wooden  pillars  forming 
galleries  beneath  which  people  pass  to  and  fro,  and 
whose  floor  planks  bend  but  do  not  break.     The 


8  BEATRIX 

shopkeepers*  houses  are  small  and  low,  and  their 
facades  are  covered  with  slates  nailed  on.  Wood, 
now  much  decayed,  enters  largely  into  the  sculptures 
about  the  windows,  which  protrude  also  on  the  sides 
above  the  pillars  in  grotesque  faces  and  lengthen  out 
at  the  corners  into  shapes  of  fantastic  beasts,  giving 
voice  to  the  leading  idea  of  art  in  those  days,  which 
was  to  give  life  to  dead  nature.  These  venerable 
objects,  which  resist  assaults  of  all  sorts,  offer  to 
painters  the  brown  tones  and  indistinct  shapes  which 
appeal  to  their  brushes.  The  streets  are  what  they 
were  four  hundred  years  ago.  But,  as  they  are  no 
longer  full  of  people,  as  the  social  movement  is  less 
active  there,  a  traveler  interested  in  examining  this 
town,  beautiful  as  a  complete  suit  of  ancient  armor, 
may  follow,  not  without  a  touch  of  melancholy,  an 
almost  deserted  street  where  the  windows  are 
stopped  up  with  clay,  to  escape  the  window  tax. 
This  street  ends  at  a  disused  postern  in  a  wall  of 
solid  masonry,  above  which  grows  a  clump  of  trees 
laid  out  with  exquisite  taste  by  the  hands  of  Breton 
nature,  one  of  the  most  lavish  and  most  luxuriant 
gardeners  in  France.  A  painter,  a  poet,  will  be 
content  to  sit  and  enjoy  the  profound  silence  that 
reigns  under  the  arch,  still  far  from  old,  of  this  pos- 
tern, whither  the  life  of  the  placid  city  sends  no 
sound,  where  the  fertile  country  appears  in  all  its 
magnificence  through  the  loopholes  once  occupied  by 
archers  and  crossbowmen,  which  now  resemble  win- 
dows in  a  belvedere.  It  is  impossible  to  walk  there- 
about without  thinking  at  every  step  of  the  manners 


BEATRIX  9 

and  the  customs  of  the  past ;  every  stone  speaks  to 
you  of  them ;  in  short,  the  ideas  of  the  Middle  Ages 
still  prevail  there  in  the  superstitious  stage.  If  by 
chance  a  gendarme  passes  with  a  laced  hat,  his 
presence  is  an  anachronism  against  which  your 
mind  protests;  but  nothing  is  more  rare  than  to 
meet  a  human  creature  or  a  thing  belonging  to  the 
present  There  is  even  very  little  wearing  apparel 
of  the  present  day;  the  little  that  the  inhabitants 
do  permit  themselves  to  wear,  adapts  itself  in  some 
sort  to  their  unchanging  manners,  their  stationary 
physiognomy.  The  public  square  is  full  of  Breton 
costumes  which  artists  come  there  to  sketch,  and 
which  are  marvelously  effective.  The  whiteness 
of  the  blouses  worn  by  the  paludiers,  the  name 
given  to  the  men  who  gather  salt  in  the  salt 
marshes,  forms  a  striking  contrast  to  the  blue  and 
brown  garments  of  the  peasants,  and  the  unique  and 
piously  preserved  headdresses  of  the  women.  These 
two  classes,  as  also  that  of  the  sailors  in  their 
jackets  and  little  glazed  hats,  are  as  distinct  from 
each  other  as  the  different  castes  in  India,  and  they 
still  recognize  the  differences  in  rank  that  separate 
the  bourgeoisie,  the  nobility  and  the  clergy.  There 
the  dividing  lines  are  still  well  marked;  the  revo- 
lutionary plane  found  the  masses  too  uneven  and 
too  hard  for  it  to  act  upon ;  it  would  have  been 
dented  thereon,  if  not  broken.  The  character  of 
immutability  with  which  nature  has  endowed  its 
zoological  species  is  found  there  among  human  be- 
ings.    In  a  word,  even  after  the  Revolution  of  1830, 


lO  BEATRIX 

Guerande  is  still  a  community  apart,  essentially 
Breton,  fervently  Catholic,  silent  and  self-con- 
tained, with  only  a  grudging  welcome  for  new  ideas. 
Its  geographical  position  explains  this  phenom- 
enon. This  attractive  town  overlooks  extensive 
salt  marshes,  whose  product  is  known  throughout 
Bretagne  as  Guerande  salt,  and  to  it  many  Bretons 
ascribe  the  excellence  of  their  butter  and  their  sar- 
dines. It  is  connected  with  modern  France  by  only 
two  roads,  the  one  that  leads  to  Savenay,  the  chief 
town  of  the  arrondissement  to  which  it  belongs,  and 
on  to  Saint-Nazaire;  and  the  one  that  leads  to 
Vannes  and  connects  it  with  the  Morbihan.  The 
departmental  road  establishes  communication  by 
land  and  Saint-Nazaire  by  sea,  with  Nantes.  The 
land  road  is  seldom  used  except  by  government 
officials.  The  most  direct  and  most  frequented 
route  is  that  by  Saint-Nazaire.  Between  that  town 
and  Guerande,  there  is  a  space  of  at  least  six  leagues 
not  served  by  the  post,  and  for  cause :  there  are  not 
three  passengers  a  year.  Saint-Nazaire  is  separated 
from  Paimboeuf  by  the  mouth  of  the  Loire,  which  is 
there  four  leagues  wide.  The  river  bar  renders 
steamboat  navigation  extremely  uncertain ;  and,  as 
a  fitting  climax  to  the  obstacles  to  travel,  there  was 
no  landing-place  in  1829  at  Saint-Nazaire,  and  that 
part  of  the  coast  was  adorned  with  slimy  stones, 
reefs  of  granite,  colossal  rocks,  which  serve  as 
natural  fortifications  to  its  picturesque  church,  and 
which  formerly  compelled  travelers  to  jump  down 
into  the  boats  with  their  luggage  when  there  was  a 


BEATRIX  II 

sea  running,  or,  when  the  weather  was  fine,  to 
wade  across  the  reefs  to  the  jetty  which  engineers 
were  then  building.  These  obstacles,  ill-adapted  to 
encourage  travelers  for  pleasure,  still  exist  for 
aught  we  know.  In  the  first  place,  government  is 
slow  in  its  operations ;  and  secondly,  the  people  of 
that  region,  which  stands  out  like  a  tooth  on  the 
map  of  France,  between  Saint-Nazaire,  Batz  and  Le 
Croisic,  readily  adapt  themselves  to  the  difficulties 
which  make  the  approaches  to  their  territory  so  for- 
bidding to  strangers. 

Cast  aside  into  a  corner  of  the  continent,  Gue- 
rande  leads  to  nowhere,  and  no  one  comes  thither. 
Happy  at  being  ignored,  it  thinks  only  of  itself. 
The  enormous  product  of  the  salt  marshes,  which 
pay  no  less  than  a  million  to  the  treasury,  is  shipped 
from  Le  Croisic,  the  peninsular  town,  whose  com- 
munication with  Guerande  is  over  shifting  sand 
where  the  ruts  made  by  day  are  effaced  during  the 
night,  and  by  boats  which  are  indispensable  to  cross 
the  arm  of  the  sea  that  has  broken  through  the  sand 
and  serves  as  a  harbor  to  Le  Croisic.  Thus  this 
charming  little  town  is  the  Herculaneum  of  feudal 
times,  minus  the  winding-sheet  of  lava.  It  exists 
without  living,  it  has  no  other  reason  for  existence 
than  that  it  has  never  been  demolished. 

If  you  come  to  Guerande  by  way  of  Le  Croisic, 
after  passing  through  the  district  of  salt  marshes, 
you  will  feel  a  thrill  of  keen  emotion  at  the  sight  of 
those  vast  fortifications,  still  apparently  quite  new. 
The  picturesqueness  of  its  location  and  the  simple 


12  BEATRIX 

charm  of  its  surroundings,  if  you  come  by  way  of 
Saint-Nazaire,  are  no  less  attractive.  The  country 
all  about  is  enchantingly  beautiful,  the  hedges  are 
bright  with  flowers,  honeysuckle,  box,  roses  and 
lovely  blossoms  of  all  sorts.  You  would  say  it  was 
an  English  garden  designed  by  a  great  artist.  This 
lovely,  modest  scene,  so  entirely  unartificial,  and 
as  charming  as  a  bunch  of  violets  or  lilies  of  the 
valley  in  a  dense  forest,  has  for  its  frame  an  African 
desert  bordered  by  the  ocean — a  desert  without  a 
tree,  without  a  blade  of  grass,  without  a  bird, 
where,  on  sunshiny  days,  the  paludiers,  dressed  in 
white  and  scattered  here  and  there  among  the  mel- 
ancholy marshes  where  the  salt  is  cultivated,  re- 
mind one  of  Arabs  in  their  long  burnous.  Thus 
Ouerande,  with  its  charming  landscape,  with  its 
desert,  bounded  at  the  right  by  Le  Croisic  and  at 
the  left  by  the  village  of  Batz,  resembles  nothing 
that  travelers  see  elsewhere  in  France.  These  two 
strongly  contrasted  aspects  of  nature,  united  by  the 
last  reflection  of  feudal  life,  create  an  indescribable 
impression  upon  the  imagination.  The  town  pro- 
duces the  effect  upon  the  mind  that  a  sedative 
draught  produces  upon  the  body;  it  is  as  silent  as 
Venice.  There  is  no  public  conveyance  save  that 
of  a  carrier  who  takes  travelers,  freight  and  an 
occasional  letter  from  Saint-Nazaire  to  Guerande 
and  vice  versa,  in  a  springless  wagon.  Bernus  the 
carrier  was,  in  1829,  the  factotum  of  this  important 
community.  He  makes  his  trips  when  he  chooses, 
the  whole  province  knows  him,  he  does  everybody's 


BEATRIX  13 

errands.  The  arrival  of  a  carriage, — whether  it 
contain  some  female  passing  through  Guerande  en 
route  by  land  to  Le  Croisic,  or  an  aged  invalid  or 
two  on  their  way  to  take  the  sea  baths, — which, 
among  the  cliffs  of  that  peninsula,  possess  virtues 
superior  to  those  at  Boulogne,  Dieppe  and  Les 
Sables — is  a  momentous  event  The  peasants  come 
to  the  town  on  horseback,  most  of  them  bringing 
produce  in  their  saddle-bags.  They  are  brought 
thither,  for  the  most  part,  like  the  paludiers,  by  the 
necessity  of  purchasing  the  trinkets  specially 
affected  by  their  caste,  which  are  presented  at  all 
Breton  betrothals,  as  well  as  the  white  linen  or  stuff 
for  their  costumes.  Within  a  circuit  of  ten  leagues 
Guerande  is  still  Guerande,  the  illustrious  city 
where  the  famous  treaty  was  signed,  the  key  of  the 
coast ;  and  the  name  still  recalls,  no  less  than  that 
of  Batz,  a  splendor  vanished  now  in  the  darkness  of 
the  past.  The  trinkets,  the  stuff,  the  linen,  the 
ribbon,  the  hats  are  made  elsewhere,  but  they  are 
of  Guerande  manufacture  in  the  eyes  of  all  the 
consumers.  Every  artist,  aye,  every  bourgeois,  who 
visits  Guerande  feels,  like  those  who  sojourn  at 
Venice,  a  longing,  soon  forgotten,  to  end  his  days 
in  peace  and  silence,  walking  in  fine  weather  on 
the  wall  that  surrounds  the  town  from  one  gate  to 
the  other.  Sometimes  the  image  of  the  town  returns 
and  knocks  at  the  temple  of  memory ;  it  enters  with 
its  headdress  of  turrets,  arranged  in  its  girdle  of 
walls;  it  spreads  out  its  dress  sown  with  lovely 
flowers,  shakes  the    golden   mantle   of   its  dunes. 


14  BEATRIX 

exhales  the  intoxicating  odors  of  its  pleasant,  rough 
roads,  bordered  with  nosegays  tossed  together  by 
the  hand  of  chance ;  it  attracts  your  attention  and 
calls  to  you  like  a  divinely  beautiful  woman  whom 
you  have  caught  a  glimpse  of  in  some  foreign  coun- 
try, and  who  has  found  a  lodgment  in  a  corner  of 
your  heart 

Close  by  the  church  atGuerande  is  a  house  which 
in  the  town,  is  what  the  town  itself  is  in  the  pro>- 
vince — an  exact  image  of  the  past,  the  symbol  of  a 
great  thing  destroyed,  a  poem.  This  house  belongs 
to  the  noblest  family  in  the  province,  the  Du 
Guaisnics,  who,  in  the  days  of  the  Du  Guesclins, 
were  as  superior  to  them  in  fortune  and  in  antiquity 
as  the  Trojans  were  to  the  Romans.  The  Guaisq- 
lain — also  written  formerly  Du  Glakquin — which 
was  transformed  into  Guesclin,  were  descendants-  of 
the  Guaisnics.  Old  as  the  granite  of  Bretagne,  the 
Guaisnics  are  neither  Franks  nor  Gauls — they  are 
Bretons,  or,  to  speak  more  exactly,  Celts.  They 
must  have  been  Druids  long  ago,  have  gathered  the 
mistletoe  of  the  sacred  forests  and  sacrificed  men 
upon  the  cromlechs.  It  is  useless  to  say  what  they 
were.  To-day  that  race,  equal  to  the  Rohans, 
although  it  has  never  deigned  to  assume  princely 
rank,  a  race  that  was  powerful  before  Hugues  Capet's 
ancestors  were  ever  heard  of,  a  race  absolutely 
free  from  all  base  alloy,  possesses  an  income  of 
about  two  thousand  francs,  with  its  house  at  Gue- 
rande  and  its  little  castle  of  Guaisnic.  All  the 
estates  appertaining  to  the  barony  of  Guaisnic,  the 


BEATRIX  15 

first  in  Bretagne,  are  mortgaged  to  the  tenants  and 
bring  in  about  sixty  thousand  francs,  despite  the 
imperfect  methods  of  cultivation.  The  Du  Guais- 
nics  still  own  their  estates,  by  the  way;  but,  as 
they  cannot  repay  the  capital  placed  in  their  hands 
two  hundred  years  ago  by  the  then  tenants,  they 
cannot  touch  the  revenues.  They  are  in  the  situa- 
tion of  the  crown  of  France  with  its  engagistes  prior 
to  1789.  Where  and  when  will  the  barons  find  the 
million  their  farmers  entrusted  to  them?  Before 
1789  the  control  of  the  fiefs  dependent  upon  the 
castle  of  Guaisnic,  which  stood  on  the  summit  of 
a  hill,  was  still  worth  fifty  thousand  francs;  but 
the  National  Assembly  passed  a  vote  doing  away 
with  the  feudal  taxes  collected  by  the  nobles. 
Under  these  circumstances,  this  family,  which  is 
no  longer  of  importance  to  anyone  in  France,  would 
be  a  laughing  stock  at  Paris;  at  Guerande  it  stands 
for  all  Bretagne.  At  Guerande,  the  Baron  du 
Guaisnic  is  one  of  the  great  barons  of  France,  one 
of  those  men  above  whom  there  is  but  a  single  man, 
the  King  of  France,  formerly  chosen  as  their  chief. 
To-day  the  name  of  Du  Guaisnic,  which  is  full  of 
meaning  from  a  Breton  standpoint,  and  whose  ex- 
traction is  explained  in  The  Chouans,  or  Bretagne  in 
lygg,  has  undergone  the  change  that  disfigures  the 
name  of  Du  Guaisqlain.  The  tax-collector,  like 
everybody  else,  writes  Guenic. 

At  the  end  of  a  dark,  damp,  silent  lane,  formed  by 
the  gable  ends  of  the  adjacent  houses,  may  be  seen 
the  arch  of  a  low  gate,  just  broad  enough  and  high 


l6  BEATRIX 

enough  to  admit  a  mounted  man,  a  circumstance 
that  at  once  informs  you  that  at  the  time  that  gate- 
way was  built,  carriages  did  not  exist.  The  arch, 
supported  by  two  piers,  is  all  of  granite.  The  gate, 
made  of  oak  rough-hewn  like  the  bark  of  trees 
split  for  firewood,  is  thickly  studded  with  enormous 
nails  in  geometrical  designs.  The  keystone  of  the 
arch  is  hollowed  out  It  bears  the  escutcheon  of  the 
Du  Guaisnics  as  sharp  and  clear  as  if  the  sculptor 
had  just  finished  it  The  shield  would  delight  the 
heart  of  a  student  of  heraldry  by  a  simplicity  of  de- 
sign that  proves  the  pride  and  the  antiquity  of  the 
family.  It  is  as  it  was  on  the  day  that  the  Crusades 
in  behalf  of  Christianity  invented  these  symbols  as 
a  means  of  recognition;  the  Guaisnics  have  never 
quartered  it;  it  is  always  like  unto  itself,  like  the 
crest  of  the  House  of  France,  which  connoisseurs 
find  centred  or  quartered  in  the  arms  of  the  oldest  fam- 
ilies. This  is  it,  as  you  can  see  it  still  at  Guerande : 
gules,  a  hand,  flesh-colored,  with  ermine  wristband, 
grasping  a  sword  in  pale,  with  this  awe-inspiring  word 
for  a  device:  Fac!  Is  it  not  a  grand  and  noble 
thing?  The  toriil  of  the  baronial  coronet  surmounts 
this  simple  shield,  on  which  the  vertical  lines,  em- 
ployed in  sculpture  to  represent  gules,  or  red,  still 
stand  prominently  forth.  The  artist  has  given  an 
indescribably  proud  and  chivalric  turn  to  the  hand. 
With  what  nervous  vigor  it  grasps  the  sword,  which 
the  family  used  only  yesterday!  In  truth,  if  you 
should  go  to  Guerande  after  reading  this  narrative, 
it  would  be  impossible  for  you  to  restrain  a  thrill 


BEATRIX  17 

when  you  see  that  escutcheon.  Yes,  the  most  radi- 
cal Republican  would  be  touched  by  the  fidelity,  the 
nobility,  the  grandeur  that  lie  hidden  at  the  end  of 
that  lane.  The  Du  Guaisnics  did  well  yesterday, 
they  are  ready  to  do  well  to-morrow.  To  do  is  the 
great  word  of  chivalry.  You  did  well  in  battle,  was 
the  common  remark  of  the  Constable,  par  excellence, 
that  great  Du  Guesclin,  who  drove  the  English  from 
France  for  a  time. 

The  depth  of  the  carving,  preserved  from  the  rav- 
ages of  time  by  the  broad  margin  due  to  the  rounded 
projection  of  the  arch,  is  in  harmony  with  the  moral 
depth  of  the  device  in  the  soul  of  the  family.  To 
him  who  knows  the  Du  Guaisnics,  this  characteris- 
tic becomes  profoundly  touching. 

Through  the  open  gateway  you  can  see  a  court- 
yard of  considerable  extent,  at  the  right  of  which 
are  the  stables,  at  the  left  the  kitchen.  The  man- 
sion is  of  hewn  stone  from  cellar  to  attic.  The 
facade  on  the  courtyard  is  furnished  with  a  flight  of 
steps  with  a  double  rail,  the  portico  being  covered 
with  the  remains  of  carvings  worn  away  by  time, 
although  the  eye  of  the  antiquary  can  still  distin- 
guish the  hand  holding  the  sword  in  the  centre  of 
the  principal  pieces.  Under  this  pretty  porch, 
framed  by  carved  mouldings  broken  here  and  there 
and  polished  in  some  places  by  long  use,  is  a  little 
box  formerly  occupied  by  a  watchdog.  The  stone 
balusters  are  disjointed;  grass  and  moss  and  a  few 
tiny  flowers  are  growing  in  the  cracks  and  between 
the  steps  of  the  staircase,  which  the  centuries  have 


l8  BEATRIX 

displaced  without  depriving  them  of  their  solidity. 
The  door  must  have  been  of  an  attractive  design. 
As  far  as  one  can  judge  from  what  is  left  of  it,  it 
was  the  work  of  an  artist  reared  in  the  great  Ve- 
netian school  of  the  thirteenth  century.  There  is  an 
indefinable  mingling  of  the  Byzantine  and  the  Moor- 
ish. It  is  surmounted  by  a  circular  projection  laden 
with  flowers,  a  pink,  yellow,  brown  or  blue  bouquet, 
according  to  the  season.  The  studded  oaken  door 
opens  into  a  vast  hall,  with  another  and  a  similar 
stoop  at  the  other  end,  leading  to  the  garden.  This 
hall  is  in  a  marvelous  state  of  preservation.  Its 
wainscoting,  waist-high,  is  of  chestnut  The  walls 
are  covered  with  magnificent  Spanish  leather,  en- 
livened by  raised  figures,  but  the  gilding  has 
crumbled  and  turned  red.  The  ceiling  is  made  of 
boards  artistically  joined,  painted  and  gilded.  The 
gold  can  hardly  be  distinguished;  it  is  in  the  same 
state  as  that  on  the  Cordovan  leather,  but  you  can 
still  see  a  few  red  flowers  and  some  green  foliage. 
It  is  more  than  probable  that  a  thorough  cleansing 
would  bring  to  light  paintings  similar  to  those  that 
adorn  the  ceilings  in  Tristan's  house  at  Tours, 
which  would  prove  that  these  ceilings  were  re- 
newed or  restored  in  the  reign  of  Louis  XI.  The 
fireplace  of  carved  stone  is  an  enormous  affair,  pro- 
vided with  enormous  andirons  of  hammered  iron  of 
priceless  workmanship.  It  would  hold  a  load  of 
wood.  The  furniture  of  the  hall  is  all  of  oak  and 
each  piece  has  the  family  crest  surmounting  its  back. 
Tliere  are  three  English  guns,  equally  adapted  for 


BEATRIX  19 

hunting  and  for  war,  three  swords,  two  gamebags, 
and  the  ordinary  paraphernalia  of  the  hunter  and 
angler  hanging  upon  nails  against  the  wall. 

At  one  side  is  a  dining-room  which  communicates 
with  the  kitchen  by  a  door  in  a  little  turret  at  the 
corner  of  the  house.  This  turret  corresponds  to 
another  at  the  other  corner  of  the  courtyard  facade, 
in  which  there  is  a  winding  stairway  leading  to  the 
two  upper  floors.  The  dining-room  is  hung  with 
tapestry  that  dates  back  to  the  fourteenth  century, 
as  is  proved  by  the  style  and  spelling  of  the  inscrip- 
tions placed  on  the  scrolls  under  each  figure;  but 
as  they  are  in  the  artless  language  of  the  fabliaux  it 
is  impossible  to  transcribe  them  to-day.  These 
tapestries,  which  are  very  well  preserved  where 
the  light  has  not  had  free  access  to  them,  are  sur- 
rounded by  bands  of  carved  oak,  black  as  ebony. 
The  ceiling  consists  of  projecting  beams,  each  em- 
bellished with  leaves  of  a  different  shape;  the 
spaces  between  are  covered  with  painted  boards 
with  garlands  of  flowers  in  gold  upon  a  blue  ground. 
Two  old  sideboards  face  each  other.  Upon  their 
polished  surfaces,  which  Mariotte,  the  cook,  rubs 
faithfully  with  true  Breton  obstinacy,  may  be 
seen,  as  in  1200  when  the  kings  were  quite  as 
poor  as  the  Du  Guaisnics  in  1830,  four  old  goblets, 
an  old  battered  soup  tureen  and  two  saltcellars, 
all  in  silver ;  then  there  are  quantities  of  pewter 
plates,  quantities  of  tankards  in  blue  and  gray 
stoneware  with  arabesque  designs  and  the  Du 
Guaisnic   arms,    each   with  a  hinged   pewter   lid. 


20  BEATRIX 

The  mantelpiece  has  been  modernized.  Its  condi- 
tion proves  that  the  family  has  lived  in  this  room 
since  the  last  century.  It  is  of  carved  stone  in  the 
style  of  the  time  of  Louis  XV.,  adorned  with  a  mirror 
between  two  piers  beaded  and  gilded.  This  antith- 
esis, unheeded  by  the  family,  would  vex  the  soul 
of  a  poet  In  the  centre  of  the  shelf,  which  is  cov- 
ered with  red  velvet,  is  a  tortoise-shell  clock  inlaid 
with  copper,  and  on  each  side  a  silver  candlestick 
of  curious  workmanship.  A  large  square  table  with 
twisted  legs  stands  in  the  centre  of  the  room.  The 
chairs  are  of  turned  wood,  upholstered  in  tapestry. 
Upon  a  round  table  with  a  single  leg,  representing 
a  vine,  and  standing  in  front  of  the  window  opening 
on  the  garden,  is  a  lamp  of  an  odd  pattern.  It  con- 
sists of  a  common  glass  globe  a  little  smaller  than 
an  ostrich  egg,  set  up  in  a  candlestick  by  means  of 
a  glass  rod.  From  a  hole  in  the  top  of  the  globe 
comes  a  flat  wick  coiled  in  a  sort  of  copper  reed  like 
a  tapeworm  in  a  long-necked  bottle,  and  this  wick 
drinks  up  the  nut  oil  contained  in  the  globe.  The 
window  opening  on  the  garden,  like  that  which 
opens  on  the  courtyard — and  they  occupy  corre- 
sponding positions — has  a  stone  framework,  and 
hexagonal  panes  set  in  lead;  the  curtains,  draped 
over  baldaquins  and  furnished  with  huge  tassels, 
are  of  an  old  red  silk  material,  with  a  yellow  tinge, 
formerly  called  brocatelle  or  little  brocade. 

On  each  floor  of  the  house,  and  there  are  two, 
there  are  rooms  corresponding  to  these  two,  and  no 
others.     The  first  serves  as  the  habitation  of  the 


BEATRIX  21 

head  of  the  family.  The  second  was  formerly  in- 
tended for  the  children.  The  guests  were  quartered 
in  the  rooms  under  the  roof.  The  servants  lived 
over  the  stables  and  the  kitchen.  The  pointed  roof, 
leaded  at  the  angles,  is  pierced  on  both  courtyard 
and  garden  sides  by  a  magnificent  ogive  window 
rising  almost  as  high  as  the  peak,  with  slender, 
graceful  consoles,  the  carving  of  which  has  been 
eaten  into  by  the  saline  vapors  of  the  atmosphere. 
Above  the  ornamental  pediment  of  these  windows 
with  their  four  stone  transoms,  the  weathercock  of 
the  nobility  still  creaks  in  the  wind. 

Let  us  not  overlook  one  priceless  detail,  artless  in 
the  extreme,  which  is  not  without  merit  in  the  eyes 
of  archaeologists.  The  turret  containing  the  wind- 
ing stairway  is  at  the  corner  of  a  high  gable  end  in 
which  there  is  no  window.  The  staircase  descends 
through  a  small  ogive  door  to  a  sanded  yard  which 
separates  the  house  from  the  boundary  wall  against 
which  the  stables  are  built  This  turret  is  repeated 
on  the  garden  side  by  another  with  five  faces,  ter- 
minating in  a  cupola  which  supports  a  little  steeple, 
instead  of  wearing  a  pepper-box  on  its  head  like  its 
sister.  That  is  the  way  in  which  the  accomplished 
architects  varied  the  symmetry  of  their  creation. 
At  the  first-floor  level  only,  these  turrets  are  con- 
nected by  a  stone  gallery  supported  by  objects  like 
ships'  figureheads  with  human  faces.  This  exterior 
gallery  is  embellished  with  a  balustrade  of  mar- 
velous beauty  and  delicacy  of  workmanship.  From 
the  peak  of  the  gable  end,  beneath  which  there  is  a 


22  BEATRIX 

single  oblong  cross  beam,  depends  a  stone  ornament 
representing  a  canopy  like  those  that  surmount  the 
statues  of  saints  in  church  doorways.  The  two 
turrets  have  each  a  pretty  door  with  a  pointed  arch 
opening  on  the  gallery.  Such  was  the  treatment 
by  the  architects  of  the  thirteenth  century  of  the 
cold,  bare  wall  presented  in  our  day  by  the  cut-off 
corner  of  a  house. 

Can  you  not  see  a  woman  walking  on  that 
gallery  in  the  morning  and  watching  the  sun 
over  Guerande  light  up  the  golden  sands  and 
burnish  the  vast  expanse  of  the  sea?  Do  you 
not  admire  that  wall  with  the  flower-bedecked  crest, 
and  at  its  two  angles  two  turrets,  fluted  as  it  were, 
one  of  them  abruptly  rounded  off  like  a  swallow's 
nest,  and  the  other  presenting  its  pretty  door  with 
the  gothic  arch,  embellished  with  the  hand  holding 
a  sword?  The  other  gable  of  the  Du  Guaisnic 
mansion  adjoins  the  next  house.  The  harmony  for 
which  the  masters  of  those  days  labored  so  zealously 
is  preserved  in  the  courtyard  facade  by  the  turret 
similar  to  the  one  containing  the  screw-stair — such 
was  the  name  formerly  given  to  a  winding  stair- 
case— that  is  to  say,  the  one  that  serves  as  a  means 
of  communication  between  the  dining-room  and 
kitchen ;  but  it  stops  at  the  first  floor,  and  its 
crown  is  a  small  open  dome  beneath  which  stands  a 
black  statue  of  Saint  Calyste. 

The  garden  is  a  luxurious  affair  for  such  an  old 
place;  it  contains  about  half  an  acre  and  its  walls 
are  lined  with  espaliers;  it  is  divided  into  square 


BEATRIX  23 

beds  of  vegetables,  bordered  with  fruit  trees  cut  dis- 
taff-fashion and  cared  for  by  a  male  servant  named 
Gasselin,  who  also  attends  to  the  horses.  At  the 
end  of  the  garden  is  an  arbor  with  a  bench  beneath 
it.  In  the  centre  is  a  sundial.  The  paths  are 
sanded.  The  facade  on  the  garden  has  no  turret 
to  correspond  to  that  which  rises  at  the  corner  of  the 
gable  end.  It  atones  for  this  defect  by  a  little  spiral 
column  extending  from  the  ground  to  the  roof, 
which  was  intended  to  bear  the  family  banner  in 
the  old  days,  for  it  ends  in  a  sort  of  large  socket  of 
rusty  iron,  about  which  some  thin  blades  of  grass 
are  growing.  This  detail,  in  harmony  with  the  re- 
mains of  the  carving,  proves  that  the  building  was 
constructed  by  a  Venetian  architect  The  graceful 
staff  is  like  a  signature,  which  betrays  the  Venetian 
hand  and  the  chivalry  and  refinement  of  the  thir- 
teenth century.  If  there  remained  any  doubt  in 
that  respect,  the  nature  of  the  ornaments  would  put 
an  end  to  it.  The  trefoils  of  the  Du  Guaisnic  man- 
sion have  four  branches  instead  of  three.  This 
difference  points  to  the  Venetian  school  as  debased 
by  its  intercourse  with  the  Orient,  where  the 
half-Moorish  architects,  caring  little  for  the  great 
Catholic  idea,  gave  four  leaves  to  the  trefoil, 
while  the  Christian  architects  remained  true  to  the 
Trinity.  In  this  respect,  the  Venetian  caprice  was 
heretical. 

If  this  building  takes  your  imagination  by  sur- 
prise, you  will  wonder  perhaps  why  such  miracles 
of  art  are  not  imitated  at  the  present  day.     To-day 


24  BEATRIX 

the  fine  houses  are  sold  and  torn  down  to  make  room 
for  streets.  No  one  knows  whether  his  own  gener- 
ation will  continue  in  possession  of  the  patrimonial 
mansion,  where  everyone  goes  in  and  out  as  at  an 
inn;  whereas  formerly,  in  building  a  house  to  live 
in,  a  man  was  building,  or  supposed  that  he  was,  for 
a  never-ending  family.  Hence  the  beauty  of  the 
houses.  Faith  in  one's  self  performed  prodigies  as 
well  as  did  faith  in  God. 

As  for  the  arrangement  and  furnishing  of  the  up- 
per floors,  they  can  be  imagined  in  accordance  with 
the  description  of  the  ground  floor,  and  in  accordance 
with  the  characteristics  and  manners  of  the  family. 
For  fifty  years  past,  the  Du  Guaisnics  have  never 
received  a  guest  elsewhere  than  in  the  two  rooms 
in  which,  as  in  the  courtyard  and  the  external 
accessories  of  the  mansion,  one  breathed  the  spirit 
and  the  artless  charm  of  ancient,  noble  Bretagne. 
Without  the  topographical  description  of  the  town, 
without  this  minute  account  of  the  house,  the  re- 
markable figures  of  the  members  of  the  family 
would  have  been  less  readily  understood  perhaps. 
So  the  frames  should  come  before  the  portraits. 
It  will  be  said  that  things  have  taken  precedence 
of  men.  There  are  monuments  that  have  a  vis- 
ible influence  over  the  persons  that  live  in  the 
neighborhood.  It  is  difficult  to  be  irreligious  in  the 
shadow  of  a  cathedral  like  that  at  Bourges.  When 
the  mind  is  reminded  of  its  destiny  at  every  turn 
by  images,  it  is  less  easy  to  fail  to  act  up  to 
it      Such  was  the  opinion  of  our  ancestors,  now 


BEATRIX  25 

abandoned  by  a  generation  that  knows  no  symbols 
or  distinctions  and  changes  its  moral  code  every  ten 
years.  Do  you  not  expect  to  find  the  Baron  du 
Guaisnic  with  a  sword  in  his  hand,  or  is  this  all  a 
falsehood  ? 


In  1836,  at  the  time  when  this  scene  opens,  in  the 
early  days  of  August,  the  Du  Guenic  family  was 
composed  of  Monsieur  and  Madame  du  Guenic,  of 
Mademoiselle  du  Guenic,  the  baron's  older  sister, 
and  of  an  only  son,  twenty-one  years  of  age,  named 
Gaudebert-Calyste-Louis,  in  accordance  with  an 
old  family  custom.  The  father's  name  was  Gau- 
debert-Calyste-Charles.  Only  the  last  baptismal 
name  was  ever  varied.  Saint  Gaudebert  and  Saint 
Calyste  were  always  to  be  the  patron  saints  of  the 
Du  Guenics. 

The  Baron  du  Guenic  had  left  Guerande  when  La 
Vendee  and  Bretagne  took  up  arms,  and  had  fought 
under  Charette,  Catelineau,  La  Rochejacquelein, 
D'Elbee,  Bonchamps  and  the  Prince  de  Loudon. 
Before  setting  out  he  sold  all  his  property  to  his 
older  sister,  Mademoiselle  Zephirine  du  Guenic, 
with  a  gleam  of  foresight  unique  in  revolutionary 
annals.  After  the  death  of  all  the  heroes  of  the 
West,  the  baron,  whom  nothing  short  of  a  miracle 
had  preserved  from  ending  his  days  like  them,  did 
not  submit  to  Napoleon.  He  continued  in  arms 
until  1802,  in  which  year,  after  coming  within  a 
hair's  breadth  of  allowing  himself  to  be  taken,  he 
returned  to  Guerande,  went  from  Guerande  to  Le 
Croisic,  and  made  his  way  thence  into  Ireland, 
faithful  to  the  Breton's  hereditary  hatred  of  England. 

(27) 


28  BEATRIX 

The  people  of  Guerande  pretended  not  to  know  of 
the  baron's  existence :  for  twenty  years,  not  a  single 
incautious  word  was  uttered.  Mademoiselle  du 
Guenic  collected  the  income  and  sent  it  to  her 
brother  by  fishermen. 

In  i8i  3,  Monsieur  du  Guenic  returned  to  Guerande 
as  quietly  as  if  he  had  simply  been  to  Nantes  for 
the  season.  During  his  stay  in  Dublin,  the  old 
Breton,  notwithstanding  his  fifty  years,  had  fallen 
in  love  with  a  charming  Irish  girl,  daughter  of  one 
of  the  noblest  and  most  destitute  families  of  that 
unhappy  kingdom.  Miss  Fanny  O'Brien  was  at 
that  time  one-and-twenty.  The  Baron  du  Guenic 
came  to  France  to  procure  the  papers  necessary  to 
his  marriage,  went  back  to  Ireland  to  marry,  and 
returned  ten  months  later,  at  the  beginning  of  1814, 
with  his  wife,  who  presented  him  with  Calyste  on 
the  very  day  that  Louis  XVIII.  landed  at  Calais, — a 
fact  which  explains  his  name  of  Louis.  The  loyal 
old  Breton  was  seventy-three  at  the  time  our  story 
opens;  but  his  long  partisan  warfare  upon  the  Re- 
public, his  sufferings  during  five  passages  across  the 
Channel  on  fishing  boats,  and  his  life  at  Dublin, 
had  told  heavily  upon  him;  he  looked  to  be  more 
than  a  hundred  years  old.  So  it  was  that  never,  at 
any  epoch,  had  a  Du  Guenic  been  more  in  harmony 
with  the  antique  air  of  this  structure,  built  in  the 
days  when  there  was  a  court  at  Guerande. 

Monsieur  du  Guenic  was  a  tall,  straight,  angular, 
nervous,  spare  old  man.  His  oval  face  was  fur- 
rowed  with   thousands  of  wrinkles  which  formed 


BEATRIX  29 

arched  fringes  above  his  cheek  bones  and  eyebrows, 
and  made  his  face  resemble  the  old  men  whom  the 
pencils  of  Van  Ostade,  Rembrandt,  Mieris  and  Ge- 
rard Dow  were  so  fond  of  painting,  and  which  need 
a  magnify ing-gl ass  to  be  appreciated.  His  features 
were  buried,  as  it  were,  under  these  numerous  folds, 
due  to  his  life  in  the  open  air,  to  the  custom  of 
scrutinizing  the  country  closely  in  the  bright  sun- 
light, at  dawn  as  well  as  at  nightfall.  Neverthe- 
less, the  observer  could  still  detect  the  imperishable 
lines  of  the  human  face,  which  have  something  to 
say  to  the  mind  even  when  the  eye  can  no  longer 
see  in  them  aught  but  a  death's  head.  The  un- 
broken contour  of  the  face,  the  shape  of  the  fore- 
head, the  serious  lines,  the  thin  nose,  the  structure 
of  the  skull  which  wounds  alone  can  change,  denoted 
unreflecting  courage,  boundless  faith,  unquestion- 
ing obedience,  uncompromising  fidelity,  imperish- 
able love.  In  him,  the  Breton  granite  was  incarnate. 
The  baron  had  no  teeth.  His  lips,  once  red,  now 
purple,  being  held  in  place  only  by  the  hard  gums 
with  which  he  ate  the  bread  which  his  wife  took 
care  to  soften  by  placing  in  a  damp  napkin — his 
lips  were  sunken,  but  the  expression  of  his  mouth 
was  proud  and  threatening  none  the  less.  His  chin 
seemed  anxious  to  meet  his  nose,  but  the  shape  of 
the  last-named  organ,  which  was  curved  at  the 
ridge,  was  a  sufficient  indication  of  his  energy 
and  Breton  obstinacy.  His  skin,  mottled  with  red 
blotches  which  could  be  seen  through  his  wrinkles, 
denoted    a    full-blooded,    violent  disposition,   well 


30  BEATRIX 

adapted  to  endure  the  fatigue  which  had  doubtless 
preserved  the  baron  many  a  time  from  an  apoplectic 
stroke.  His  head  was  crowned  with  hair  as  white 
as  silver,  which  fell  in  curls  about  his  shoulders. 
His  face,  extinct,  as  it  were,  in  part,  still  lived  by 
virtue  of  two  bright  black  eyes,  which  gleamed 
from  the  depths  of  their  dark  orbits,  and  emitted  the 
last  flames  of  a  generous,  loyal  heart  The  eye- 
brows and  lashes  had  fallen  out.  The  skin  had  be- 
come hardened  and  could  not  smooth  out  its  wrinkles. 
The  difficulty  of  shaving  compelled  the  old  man  to 
let  his  beard  grow  in  the  shape  of  a  fan.  A  painter 
would  have  admired  above  everything,  in  this  old 
Breton  lion  with  the  broad  shoulders  and  muscular 
chest,  the  soldier's  superb  hands,  hands  such  as  Du 
Guesclin  must  have  had — broad  and  thick  and 
hairy;  hands  which  had  grasped  the  sword  hilt,  like 
Jeanne  Dare,  never  to  relax  their  hold  until  the  day 
when  the  royal  standard  should  wave  in  the  Cathe- 
dral of  Reims;  hands  which  had  often  been  torn  by 
the  thorny  hedges  in  Le  Bocage,  which  had  handled 
the  oar  in  the  Marais  to  surprise  the  Blues,  or  in  the 
open  sea  to  facilitate  the  arrival  of  Georges  Cadou- 
dal ;  hands  of  the  partisan,  the  gunner,  the  private 
soldier,  the  leader ;  hands  now  white,  although  the 
Bourbons  of  the  elder  branch  were  in  exile;  but,  on 
looking  closely  at  them,  you  would  have  seen  some 
fresh  marks  indicating  that  the  baron  had  lately 
joined  Madame  in  La  Vendee.  To-day  this  fact 
may  be  avowed.  Those  hands  were  a  living  com- 
mentary on  the  noble  device  which  no  Du  Guenic 


BEATRIX  31 

had  ever  failed  to  justify :  Fac  !  The  brow  attracted 
attention  by  reason  of  the  yellow  tinge  about  the 
temples,  contrasting  with  the  dark  tone  of  the  harsh, 
wrinkled,  narrow  forehead,  which  the  falling  out  of 
the  hair  had  increased  in  size  sufficiently  to  impart 
greater  majesty  to  the  noble  ruin.  The  face — it 
was  a  little  sensual  by  the  way,  and  how  could  it 
have  been  otherwise  ? — presented,  like  all  the  Breton 
faces  grouped  about  the  baron,  a  sort  of  savage  ap- 
pearance, a  stolid  calmness  resembling  the  impas- 
siveness  of  the  Huron,  an  indefinable  suggestion  of 
insensibility,  due  perhaps  to  the  absolute  repose  fol- 
lowing excessive  fatigue,  which  allows  the  animal 
part  of  us  to  appear  by  itself.  Thought  was  rare. 
It  seemed  to  require  an  effort,  it  had  its  seat  in  the 
heart  rather  than  in  the  head,  it  resulted  in  facts 
rather  than  in  ideas.  But,  upon  watching  this  fine 
old  man  with  unremitting  attention,  you  would  di- 
vine the  mystery  of  this  sincere  opposition  to  the 
spirit  of  the  time.  He  had  ideas  that  were  like  a 
religion  to  him,  inborn  sentiments,  so  to  speak, 
which  exempted  him  from  the  necessity  of  medita- 
tion. His  duty  he  had  learned  with  his  life.  In- 
stitutions and  the  religion  thought  for  him.  It  was 
for  him  and  his,  therefore,  to  reserve  their  faculties 
for  action,  without  wasting  them  upon  any  of  the 
things  which  he  deemed  useless,  but  to  which  other 
people  devoted  much  attention.  He  drew  his 
thought  from  his  heart,  as  he  drew  his  sword  from 
its  scabbard,  dazzling  in  its  purity  as  was  the  hand 
with  the  wristband  of  ermine  in  his  crest.     Once  this 


32  BEATRIX 

secret  was  guessed,  everything  was  explained.  One 
could  understand  the  profound  resolutions  due  to 
clear,  distinct,  straightforward  thoughts,  as  immac- 
ulate as  the  ermine.  One  could  understand  the 
sale  to  his  sister  before  the  war,  which  provided  for 
every  emergency,  death,  confiscation,  exile.  The 
beauty  of  the  character  of  these  two  old  people,  for 
the  sister  lived  only  in  and  for  her  brother,  cannot 
be  understood  to  its  full  extent  by  such  selfish  crea- 
tures as  the  uncertainty  and  inconstancy  of  our  age 
are  making  of  us.  An  archangel,  bidden  to  read 
their  hearts,  would  not  have  discovered  a  single 
thought  therein  stamped  with  self-interest.  In  1814, 
when  the  cure  of  Guerande  suggested  to  the  Baron 
du  Guenic  that  he  should  go  to  Paris  and  claim  his 
reward,  the  old  sister,  miser  as  she  was  in  house- 
hold affairs,  exclaimed : 

"For  shame !  does  my  brother  need  to  go  and  hold 
out  his  hand  like  a  beggar?" 

"One  would  think  that  I  served  the  king  from  in- 
terested motives,"  said  the  old  man.  "At all  events, 
it  is  for  him  to  remember.  And  then,  too,  the  poor 
king  is  sadly  embarrassed  with  all  the  people  who 
are  pestering  him.  If  he  should  distribute  all  France 
in  small  pieces,  they  would  ask  for  more." 

This  loyal  servitor,  who  was  so  deeply  interested 
in  Louis  XVIII.,  received  a  colonel's  commission, 
the  cross  of  Saint-Louis  and  a  retiring  pension  of 
two  thousand  francs. 

"The  king  has  remembered!"  he  said,  when  he 
received  his  patents. 


BEATRIX  33 

No  one  corrected  his  mistake.  The  work  had 
been  done  by  the  Due  de  Feltre  on  the  authority  of 
the  Vendean  army  lists,  where  he  found  the  name 
of  Du  Guenic  with  divers  other  Breton  names  in  ic. 
Consequently,  in  order  to  reward  the  King  of  France, 
the  baron  in  1815  maintained  a  siege  at  Guerande 
against  the  battalions  of  General  Travot  and  abso- 
lutely refused  to  surrender  that  fortress ;  when  it 
became  necessary  to  evacuate  it,  he  fled  to  the 
woods  with  a  band  of  Chouans,  who  remained  in 
arms  until  the  second  return  of  the  Bourbons. 
Guerande  still  remembers  that  last  siege.  If  the 
old  Breton  bands  had  taken  the  field,  the  war 
aroused  by  that  heroic  resistance  would  have  set  La 
Vendee  on  fire.  We  are  compelled  to  admit  that 
the  Baron  du  Guenic  was  quite  illiterate,  but  illit- 
erate as  peasants  are :  that  is  to  say,  he  could  read 
and  write  and  could  reckon  a  little;  he  knew  the 
military  art  and  heraldry;  but,  except  his  prayer 
book,  he  had  not  read  three  volumes  in  his  life. 
His  costume,  which  could  not  be  a  matter  of  indif- 
ference to  him,  was  invariable;  it  consisted  of 
heavy  shoes,  milled  stockings,  breeches  of  greenish 
velvet,  a  cloth  waistcoat  and  a  frock  coat  with  a 
cape,  to  which  was  attached  the  cross  of  Saint- 
Louis.  His  face  wore  an  expression  of  admirable 
serenity,  and  for  a  year  past  it  had  seemed  as  if 
sleep,  the  herald  of  death,  were  preparing  it  for 
everlasting  repose.  These  constant  fits  of  drowsi- 
ness, recurring  with  greater  frequency  from  day  to 
day,  did  not  alarm  his  wife,  or  his  blind  sister,  or 
3 


34  BEATRIX 

his  friends,  whose  medical  knowledge  was  not 
great  In  their  eyes,  these  sublime  pauses  in  the 
action  of  a  mind  without  reproach,  but  sorely- 
fatigued,  could  readily  be  explained :  the  baron  had 
done  his  duty.  Those  words  told  the  whole  story. 
In  that  house,  the  subject  of  most  engrossing  in- 
terest was  the  fate  of  the  dispossessed  branch  of  the 
royal  family.  The  future  of  the  exiled  Bourbons 
and  of  the  Catholic  religion  and  the  influence  of  the 
new  political  regime  upon  Bretagne,  occupied  the 
minds  of  the  baron's  family  to  the  exclusion  of 
everything  else.  No  other  interest  was  mingled 
therewith  except  the  attachment  of  all  for  the  only 
son,  Calyste,  the  heir,  the  only  hope  of  the  great 
name  of  Du  Guenic.  The  old  Vendean,  the  old 
Chouan,  had  in  some  sort  renewed  his  youth  a  few 
years  before,  in  order  to  accustom  this  son  of  his  to 
the  violent  exercises  in  which  a  gentleman  who  is 
likely  to  be  called  into  the  field  at  any  moment  should 
be  proficient.  As  soon  as  Calyste  was  sixteen 
years  old,  his  father  took  him  into  the  swamps  and 
woods,  teaching  him  the  rudiments  of  war  in  the 
pleasures  of  the  chase,  setting  the  example  himself 
in  everything,  insensible  to  fatigue,  firmly  seated 
in  his  saddle,  sure  of  his  aim  whatever  the  quarry, 
on  the  ground  or  on  the  wing,  intrepid  at  surmount- 
ing obstacles,  inciting  his  son  to  danger  as  if  he 
had  ten  children  to  lose.  And  so,  when  the  Duch- 
esse  de  Berri  came  to  France  to  conquer  the  king- 
dom, the  father  took  his  son  with  him  in  order  to 
put  him  in  the  way  of  practising  the  device  upon 


BEATRIX  35 

his  arms.  The  baron  started  in  the  night  without 
a  word  to  his  wife — who  might  perhaps  have  in- 
duced him  to  change  his  decision — taking  his  only 
son  to  battle  as  to  a  fgte,  and  attended  by  Gasselin, 
his  only  vassal,  who  was  overjoyed  to  go.  The 
three  men  of  the  family  were  absent  six  months, 
without  once  informing  the  baroness  of  their 
whereabouts,  so  that  she  never  read  La  Quotidienne 
without  trembling  at  every  line,  as  did  his  old 
sister,  who  sat  heroically  straight  and  did  not  move 
a  muscle  as  she  listened  to  the  reading  of  the  paper. 
The  three  guns  hanging  in  the  great  hall  had,  there- 
fore, seen  recent  service.  The  baron,  who  deemed 
this  attempted  uprising  ill-advised,  left  the  field  be- 
fore the  affair  of  La  Penissi^re;  except  for  that, 
perhaps  the  family  of  Du  Guenic  would  have  be- 
come extinct 

When  the  father,  the  son  and  the  servant  arrived 
home  one  stormy  night,  after  taking  leave  of  Ma- 
dame, and  surprised  the  baroness  and  old  Mademoi- 
selle du  Guenic,  who,  by  the  exercise  of  a  faculty 
with  which  all  blind  people  are  endowed,  detected 
the  steps  of  three  men  in  the  lane,  the  baron  looked 
at  the  picture  formed  by  his  anxious  dear  ones 
around  the  little  table  lighted  by  the  antique  lamp, 
and  in  a  tremulous  voice,  while  Gasselin  was  re- 
placing the  three  guns  and  the  swords  on  the  wall, 
uttered  these  words,  truly  feudal  in  their  artless 
candor:  "All  the  barons  did  not  do  their  duty." 
Then,  after  embracing  his  wife  and  sister,  he  sat 
down  in  his  old  armchair,  and  ordered  supper  to  be 


36  BEATRIX 

served  for  his  son,  Gasselin  and  himself.  Gas- 
selin,  by  throwing  himself  in  front  of  Calyste,  had 
received  a  sabre  thrust  in  the  shoulder ;  so  simple 
a  matter  that  the  women  hardly  thanked  him. 
Neither  the  baron  nor  his  guests  uttered  a  single 
malediction  or  insulting  word  against  the  victors. 
This  silence  is  one  of  the  peculiarities  of  the 
Breton  character.  In  forty  years,  no  one  had  ever 
surprised  on  the  baron's  lips  a  scornful  word  anent 
his  adversaries.  It  was  for  them  to  ply  their  trade 
as  he  did  his  duty.  Such  profound  silence  is  an 
indication  of  immovable  will.  This  last  effort,  this 
fitful  gleam  of  expiring  energy,  had  caused  the 
baron's  present  enfeebled  condition.  The  renewed 
exile  of  the  Bourbon  family,  whose  expulsion  was 
as  miraculous  as  their  restoration,  caused  him  to 
suffer  keenly. 

About  six  o'clock  in  the  evening,  at  the  moment 
when  this  scene  opens,  the  baron,  who,  according  to 
his  long-established  custom,  had  finished  his  dinner 
at  four,  had  fallen  asleep  listening  to  the  reading  of 
Ut  Quotidienne.  His  head  was  resting  against  the 
back  of  his  chair  in  the  chimney  corner  on  the  gar- 
den side. 

In  front  of  the  fireplace,  beside  this  gnarled  trunk 
of  the  ancient  tree,  the  baroness  sat  upon  one  of  the 
old-fashioned  chairs, — a  perfect  type  of  those  ador- 
able creatures  who  exist  only  in  England,  Scotland 
or  Ireland.  In  no  other  country  are  produced  those 
damsels  of  clay  kneaded  with  milk,  with  golden  hair 
whose  curls  are  moulded  by  the  hand  of  angels,  for 


BEATRIX  37 

the  light  of  Heaven  seems  to  shimmer  in  their 
spirals  with  the  air  that  plays  among  them. 

Fanny  O'Brien  was  one  of  those  sylphs,  strong 
in  her  affection,  invincible  in  misfortune,  sweet  as 
the  music  of  her  voice,  pure  as  the  blue  of  her  eyes, 
beautiful  with  a  refined,  delicate  beauty,  and  en- 
dowed with  that  quality  of  the  flesh,  silky  to  the 
hand  and  lovely  to  the  eye,  which  neither  brush 
nor  words  can  depict  Still  lovely  at  forty-two, 
many  men  would  have  deemed  themselves  fortunate 
to  marry  her,  as  they  looked  upon  the  splendors  of 
that  ruddy-hued  August,  laden  with  flowers  and 
fruit,  refreshed  by  heavenly  dew. 

The  baroness  held  the  newspaper  in  one  dimpled 
hand  whose  short  fingers  and  nails  cut  square  were 
like  those  on  antique  statues.  She  was  half  reclining 
upon  her  chair,  without  awkwardness  or  affectation, 
her  feet  thrust  out  to  warm  them,  she  was  dressed  in  a 
black  velvet  gown,  for  the  air  had  been  cool  for  some 
few  days.  The  high  waist  marked  the  outline  of  a 
magnificent  pair  of  shoulders  and  a  shapely  bust, 
which  had  not  been  disfigured  by  nursing  an  only 
son.  Her  hair  fell  in  ringlets  beside  her  cheeks  in 
the  English  style.  Arranged  in  a  simple  braid  on 
top  of  her  head,  and  kept  in  place  by  a  tortoise-shell 
comb,  it  glistened  in  the  sunlight  like  filigree-work 
in  burnished  gold,  so  far  was  it  from  having  an  un- 
certain color.  The  baroness  confined  in  a  braid  the 
stray  curls  that  played  about  her  neck  and  are  a 
sign  of  race.  The  tiny  plait,  lost  in  the  mass  of  care- 
fully arranged  locks,  enabled  the  eye  to  follow  with 


189945 


38  BEATRIX 

delight  the  wavy  line  by  which  her  neck  was  at- 
tached to  her  lovely  shoulders.  This  little  detail 
proved  the  great  care  she  always  expended  on  her 
toilet.  She  made  it  her  aim  to  rejoice  the  old  man's 
sight.  What  a  charming,  captivating  attention! 
When  you  see  a  woman  displaying  in  her  home  life 
the  coquetry  that  other  women  expend  in  a  single 
sentiment,  be  sure  that  she  is  as  noble  a  mother  as 
wife,  that  she  is  the  joy  and  flower  of  the  household, 
that  she  has  a  due  sense  of  her  wifely  obligations, 
that  she  has  in  her  heart  and  in  her  mind  the  same 
charm  as  in  her  exterior,  that  she  does  good  in  secret, 
that  she  loves  her  neighbors  for  themselves,  as  she 
loves  God  for  Himself.  Thus  it  seemed  as  if  the 
Virgin  in  Paradise,  under  whose  protection  she 
passed  her  life,  had  rewarded  her  chaste  youth,  her 
sanctified  life  with  this  noble  old  man,  by  surround- 
ing her  with  a  sort  of  halo  that  preserved  her  from 
the  ravages  of  time.  Plato  might  have  celebrated 
the  changes  in  her  beauty  as  so  many  fresh 
charms.  Her  complexion,  once  so  fair,  had  taken 
on  those  warm,  pearly  tones  that  painters  adore. 
Her  broad,  well-shaped  brow  welcomed  lovingly  the 
light  that  played  upon  it  in  shimmering  beams. 
Her  eyes,  of  turquoise  blue,  shone  with  extreme 
gentleness  beneath  light,  velvety  lashes.  Her  soft 
eyelids,  her  throbbing  temples,  conveyed  an  inde- 
scribable suggestion  of  silent  melancholy.  The  cir- 
cle of  her  eyes,  below,  was  soft  and  white,  and 
marked  with  bluish  veins  as  at  the  base  of  the  nose. 
The  nose  was   aquiline   and  thin,  and  there  was 


BEATRIX  39 

something  royal  in  its  shape  that  recalled  her  noble 
birth.  Her  mouth,  pure  and  cleanly  cut,  was  em- 
bellished by  a  pleasant  smile,  dictated  by  untiring 
amiability.  Her  teeth  were  small  and  white.  She 
had  become  slightly  stout,  but  her  sloping  hips,  her 
graceful  figure,  were  none  the  worse  therefor.  The 
autumn  of  her  beauty  displayed  some  bright  spring 
flowers  forgotten  in  their  time,  and  the  rich  splen- 
dor of  summer.  Her  beautifully  rounded  arms,  her 
firm,  lustrous  skin  had  a  finer  grain ;  her  contours 
had  acquired  their  full  development.  Lastly,  her 
open,  serene  and  somewhat  roseate  face  and  the 
purity  of  her  blue  eyes,  which  a  too  stern  glance 
would  have  wounded,  expressed  the  unalterable 
gentleness,  the  infinite  tenderness,  of  the  angels. 

At  the  other  corner  of  the  fireplace,  in  another 
easy-chair,  the  octogenarian  sister,  the  picture  of 
her  brother  in  everything  save  her  costume,  was 
listening  to  the  reading  of  the  newspaper,  and  knit- 
ting stockings,  a  task  for  which  eyesight  is  not  es- 
sential. Both  her  eyes  were  covered  with  a  film, 
and  she  obstinately  refused  to  undergo  an  operation 
therefor,  despite  her  sister-in-law's  entreaties.  She 
alone  knew  the  secret  other  own  obstinacy;  she 
attributed  it  to  lack  of  courage,  but  she  did  not 
choose  that  twenty-five  louis  should  be  expended 
for  her;  that  sum  would  have  made  a  difference  in 
the  household  economy.  But  she  would  have  loved 
dearly  to  see  her  brother.  The  two  old  people  made 
an  admirable  foil  for  the  baroness's  beauty.  What 
woman  would  not  have  seemed  young  and  pretty 


40  BEATRIX 

between  the  baron  and  his  sister?  Mademoiselle 
Zephirine,  sightless  as  she  was,  knew  nothing  of 
the  changes  eighty  years  had  wrought  in  her  ap- 
pearance. Her  pale,  thin  face,  to  which  the  white, 
sightless  eyes  gave  something  of  the  aspect  of  a 
dead  face,  and  which  three  or  four  protruding  teeth 
rendered  almost  threatening;  where  the  deep  orbits 
of  her  eyes  were  surrounded  by  reddish  circles,  and 
where  the  chin  and  upper  lip  bore  some  few  tokens 
of  virility  long  since  whitened  by  time;  her  cold 
but  tranquil  face  was  framed  by  a  little  cap  of 
brown  calico,  quilted  like  a  counterpane,  trimmed 
with  a  linen  flounce,  and  tied  under  her  chin  with 
strings  that  were  always  a  little  rusty.  She  wore  a 
coarse  cloth  skirt  over  a  quilted  petticoat,  a  genuine 
mattress  that  concealed  double  louis,  and  pockets 
sewn  to  a  belt  which  she  took  off  every  night  and 
put  on  every  morning,  like  a  garment  Her  waist 
was  encased  in  the  popular  jacket  of  Bretagne,  made 
of  cloth  like  the  skirt  and  adorned  with  a  collarette 
with  innumerable  folds,  the  washing  of  which  was 
the  cause  of  the  only  dispute  she  had  ever  had  with 
her  sister-in-law,  for  she  would  not  change  it  more 
than  once  a  week.  From  the  huge  padded  sleeves 
of  this  jacket,  emerged  two  withered  but  nervous 
arms,  at  the  ends  of  which  were  two  hands  inces- 
santly in  motion — hands  of  a  slightly  reddish  hue  that 
made  the  arms  seem  white  as  poplar  wood  in  com- 
parison. Her  hands  were  hooked  as  a  result  of  the 
contraction  due  to  incessant  knitting;  they  were 
like  a  stocking  frame  always  ready  for  use;   the 


BEATRIX  41 

phenomenal  thing  would  have  been  to  see  them  at 
rest.  From  time  to  time,  Mademoiselle  du  Guenic 
took  a  long  knitting  needle  that  was  thrust  through 
her  dress  at  her  throat,  and  poked  it  about  between 
her  cap  and  her  hair.  A  stranger  would  have 
smiled  to  see  the  indifferent  way  in  which  she  re- 
placed the  needle  without  fear  of  wounding  herself. 
She  was  as  straight  as  a  steeple.  This  imposing 
carriage  might  have  been  considered  one  of  those 
coquetries  of  old  age  which  prove  that  pride  is  a 
passion  necessary  to  life.  Her  smile  was  bright 
and  cheerful.     She  too  had  done  her  duty. 

When  Fanny  saw  that  the  baron  had  fallen  asleep, 
she  ceased  to  read  the  paper.  A  sunbeam  passed 
from  one  window  to  the  other,  cutting  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  old  hall  in  two  with  a  band  of  gold,  and 
causing  the  black  furniture  to  shine  resplendently. 
The  light  played  about  the  carvings  of  the  ceiling, 
darted  into  the  linen  chests,  laid  a  glistening  cloth 
upon  the  oaken  table,  and  brightened  up  the  pleas- 
ant, dark  apartment,  as  Fanny's  voice  poured  into 
the  aged  lady's  heart,  music  as  grand  and  joyous 
as  that  beam.  Soon  the  sun's  rays  assumed  the 
reddish  tints  that  lead  on,  by  insensible  degrees,  to 
the  melancholy  tones  of  twilight  The  baroness 
fell  into  a  serious  reverie,  one  of  those  periods  of 
absolute  silence  which  her  sister-in-law  had  noticed 
for  the  past  fortnight,  seeking  to  find  an  explanation 
of  them  for  herself  without  questioning  the  baron- 
ess ;  but  she  studied  the  causes  of  this  preoccupation 
none  the  less  carefully,  after  the  manner  of  the 


42  BEATRIX 

blind,  who  read  as  on  a  black  page  with  white  let- 
ters, and  in  whose  minds  everything  awakens,  as 
it  were,  a  divinatory  echo.  The  blind  old  maid,  for 
whom  the  approach  of  darkness  had  no  meaning, 
continued  to  knit,  and  the  silence  became  so  pro- 
found that  the  sound  of  the  steel  needles  could  be 
plainly  heard. 

"You  dropped  the  paper,  sister,  and  still  you  are 
not  asleep,"  said  the  old  lady,  with  a  cunning  air. 

It  had  grown  dark;  Mariotte  came  in  to  light  the 
lamp  and  placed  it  on  a  square  table  in  front  of  the 
fire;  then  she  fetched  her  distaff,  her  clew  of  thread 
and  a  little  stool,  took  her  place  in  the  embrasure 
of  the  window  looking  on  the  courtyard,  and  began 
to  spin  as  she  did  every  evening.  Gasselin  was 
still  making  his  round  among  the  out-buildings, 
feeding  the  baron's  horse  and  Calyste's,  seeing 
that  all  was  well  in  the  stables  and  giving  the 
two  noble  hunting  dogs  their  evening  meal.  The 
joyous  yelping  of  the  two  creatures  was  the  last 
sound  that  awakened  the  echoes  hidden  in  the 
black  walls  of  the  old  house.  The  two  dogs  and 
the  two  horses  were  the  last  vestiges  of  the  splen- 
dors of  the  days  of  chivalry.  Had  a  man  of  im- 
agination been  sitting  upon  the  stone  steps,  giving 
free  rein  to  the  poetic  thoughts  aroused  by  the 
personages  still  living  in  that  house,  he  would 
have  been  startled  perhaps  to  hear  the  dogs  and 
the  stamping  and  neighing  of  the  horses. 

Gasselin  was  one  of  the  short,  thickset  Bretons, 
with  black  hair  and  sunburned  faces,  who  are  silent, 


BEATRIX  43 

slow-moving,  obstinate  as  mules,  but  who  always 
go  forward  in  the  path  marked  out  for  them.  He 
was  forty-two  years  old  and  had  been  twenty-five 
years  in  the  family.  Mademoiselle  had  taken  Gas- 
selin  in  at  seventeen,  upon  learning  of  the  baron's 
marriage  and  probable  return.  He  looked  upon  him- 
self now  as  one  of  the  family;  he  had  played  with 
Calyste,  he  loved  the  family  horses  and  dogs,  and 
talked  to  them  and  caressed  them  as  if  they  be- 
longed to  him.  He  wore  a  blue  linen  coat  with  little 
pockets  flapping  up  and  down  on  his  hips,  waistcoat 
and  pantaloons  of  the  same  material,  blue  stockings 
and  heavy  hobnailed  shoes.  When  it  was  too  cold, 
and  in  rainy  weather,  he  donned  the  goat-skin  cap 
commonly  worn  in  his  province. 

Mariotte,  who  was  also  past  forty,  was,  as  a 
woman,  what  Gasselin  was  as  a  man.  Never  was 
a  more  perfectly-matched  pair  harnessed  together; 
the  same  complexion,  the  same  stature,  the  same 
small,  bright,  black  eyes.  People  could  not  under- 
stand why  Mariotte  and  Gasselin  had  never  mar- 
ried; perhaps  it  would  have  been  incestuous,  for 
they  seemed  to  be  brother  and  sister.  Mariotte's 
wages  were  thirty  crowns  and  Gasselin's  one  hun- 
dred francs ;  but  a  salary  of  a  thousand  crowns  else- 
where would  not  have  induced  either  of  them  to 
leave  the  Du  Guenic  household. 

Both  were  under  the  orders  of  the  old  maid,  who, 
between  the  Vendean  war  and  her  brother's  return, 
had  become  used  to  managing  the  household.  So  it 
happened  that  when  she  knew  that  the  baron  was 


44  BEATRIX 

about  to  bring  home  a  mistress  of  the  house,  she 
was  very  deeply  moved  at  the  thought  that  she 
would  have  to  lay  aside  the  sceptre  of  a  house- 
keeper, and  abdicate  in  favor  of  the  Baronne  du 
Guenic,  whose  first  subject  she  would  be. 

Mademoiselle  Zephirine  was  very  agreeably  sur- 
prised to  find  in  Miss  Fanny  O'Brien,  a  young  lady 
born  to  exalted  rank,  to  whom  the  petty  details  of 
housekeeping  in  a  poor  family  were  excessively 
repugnant,  and  who,  like  all  noble  souls,  would 
have  preferred  dry  baker's  bread  to  the  daintiest 
repast  she  was  obliged  to  prepare  with  her  own 
hands;  capable  of  performing  the  most  painful 
duties  of  maternity,  strong  to  endure  every  neces- 
sary privation,  but  without  courage  to  undertake 
vulgar  occupations.  When  the  baron  begged  his 
sister,  in  the  name  of  his  timid  wife,  to  manage 
their  establishment,  the  old  maid  gave  the  baroness 
a  sisterly  kiss ;  she  adopted  her  as  her  daughter  and 
forthwith  adored  her,  overjoyed  that  she  could  con- 
tinue to  govern  the  household,  which  she  did  with 
incredible  rigor  and  economy,  never  relaxed  except 
on  great  occasions,  such  as  her  sister's  lying-in,  her 
nourishment  during  her  confinement,  and  every- 
thing that  concerned  Calyste,  the  beloved  child  of 
the  whole  family.  Although  the  two  servants  were 
accustomed  to  this  strict  regimen  and  there  was  no 
occasion  to  say  anything  to  them,  as  they  looked 
after  the  interests  of  their  master  more  carefully 
than  their  own,  Mademoiselle  Zephirine  always  kept 
her  eye  upon  everything.     As  there  was  nothing  to 


BEATRIX  45 

distract  her  attention,  she  always  knew,  without  go- 
ing up  to  the  garret,  the  size  of  the  pile  of  walnuts 
there,  and  how  much  oats  there  was  in  the  bins  in 
the  stable,  without  plunging  her  nervous  arm  there- 
in. At  the  end  of  a  string  attached  to  the  belt  of 
her  jacket,  she  carried  a  boatswain's  whistle  with 
which  she  called  Mariotte  by  blowing  once  and  Gas- 
selin  by  blowing  twice.  Gasselin's  great  delight 
lay  in  cultivating  the  garden  and  raising  handsome 
fruit  and  fine  vegetables  there.  He  had  so  little 
work  that,  except  for  his  gardening,  he  would  have 
found  time  hang  heavily  on  his  hands.  When  he  had 
groomed  his  horses  in  the  morning,  he  scrubbed  the 
floors  and  cleaned  the  two  rooms  on  the  ground  floor ; 
there  was  little  in  that  line  for  him  to  do  after  his 
masters.  So  you  could  not  have  found  a  single 
weed  or  a  single  harmful  insect  in  the  whole  garden. 
Sometimes  they  would  surprise  Gasselin  standing 
bareheaded  in  the  bright  sunlight,  watching  a  field- 
mouse  or  the  awful  larva  of  a  cockchafer ;  then  he 
would  run  with  childlike  joy  to  show  his  masters 
the  animal  that  had  kept  him  busy  a  whole  week. 
It  was  a  pleasure  to  him,  on  fast  days,  to  go  to  Le 
Croisic  for  fish,  which  he  could  buy  cheaper  there 
than  at  Guerande. 

So  it  was  that  there  never  was  a  more  united, 
more  coherent  family,  or  one  in  which  the  various 
members  understood  one  another  more  perfectly, 
than  in  this  saintly,  noble  family.  Masters  and 
servants  seemed  to  have  been  made  for  one  another. 
For  twenty-five  years,  there  had  been  no  discord  or 


46  BEATRIX 

trouble  of  any  sort  The  only  sorrows  were  the 
child's  slight  indispositions,  and  the  only  alarms 
were  caused  by  the  events  of  1814  and  1830. 
Although  the  same  things  were  invariably  done  at 
the  same  hours,  although  the  same  dishes  appeared 
upon  the  table  as  regularly  as  the  seasons  came 
around,  this  monotony,  like  that  of  nature,  which  is 
varied  only  by  the  alternations  of  cloud  and  rain 
and  sunshine,  was  made  endurable  by  the  affection 
which  reigned  in  all  their  hearts,  and  was  the  more 
fruitful  and  beneficent,  in  that  it  was  produced  by 
natural  laws. 


When  the  twilight  was  at  an  end,  Gasselin  en- 
tered the  hall  and  asked  his  master  respectfully  if 
he  had  need  of  him. 

"You  may  go  out  or  go  to  bed  after  prayers,"  said 
the  baron,  waking  up,  "unless  madame  or  her 
sister — " 

The  two  women  made  a  sign  of  acquiescence. 
Gasselin  knelt  on  the  floor  when  he  saw  his  mas- 
ters rise  preparatory  to  kneeling  on  their  chairs. 
Mariotte  likewise  adopted  an  attitude  of  prayer  on 
her  stool.  Old  Mademoiselle  du  Guenic  repeated 
the  prayer  in  a  loud  voice.  When  it  was  ended, 
there  was  a  knocking  at  the  door  on  the  lane.  Gas- 
selin went  to  answer  the  knock. 

"It  must  be  Monsieur  le  Cure;  he  almost  always 
comes  first,"  said  Mariotte. 

Indeed,  they  all  recognized  the  cure  of  Guerande 
by  the  sound  of  his  footsteps  on  the  resonant  steps. 
He  bowed  respectfully  to  the  three  members  of  the 
family,  and  addressed  to  each  of  them  some  of  those 
unctuously  amiable  phrases  that  priests  always 
have  at  their  tongues'  ends.  To  the  absent-minded 
bonsoir  accorded  him  by  the  mistress  of  the  house, 
he  replied  with  a  glance  of  ecclesiastical  scrutiny. 

"Are  you  not  well,  or  are  you  anxious  about 
something,  Madame  la  Baronne.?"  he  asked. 

"Thanks,  no,"  said  she. 
(47) 


48  BEATRIX 

Monsieur  Grimont,  a  man  of  some  fifty  years, 
of  medium  height,  enveloped  in  his  cassock,  be- 
neath which  protruded  two  large  shoes  adorned 
with  silver  buckles,  presented  above  his  neck-band 
a  chubby  face,  of  rather  a  pale  cast,  generally 
speaking,  but  slightly  tinged  with  gold.  He  had  a 
plump  hand.  His  ministerial  countenance  suggested 
the  Dutch  burgomaster  by  its  smooth  complexion 
and  by  its  flesh  tones,  and  the  Breton  peasant  by 
the  straight  black  hair  and  by  the  animation  in  the 
brown  eyes,  restrained,  however,  by  the  decorum  of 
his  profession.  His  joyous  humor,  like  that  of  all 
people  whose  consciences  are  calm  and  pure,  per- 
mitted him  to  jest  There  was  nothing  careworn 
or  crabbed  in  his  manner  as  in  that  of  poor  cures 
whose  power  or  whose  very  existence  is  contested 
by  their  parishioners,  and  who,  instead  of  being,  as 
Napoleon  sublimely  put  it,  the  moral  leaders  of  the 
people  and  natural  judges  of  the  peace,  are  treated 
as  enemies.  To  see  Monsieur  Grimont  walking 
through  Guerande,  the  most  incredulous  traveler 
would  recognize  in  him  the  sovereign  of  that  Cath- 
olic town;  but  this  sovereign  lowered  the  banner 
of  his  spiritual  superiority  before  the  feudal  suprem- 
acy of  the  Du  Guenics.  In  that  hall,  he  was  like 
a  chaplain  beneath  the  roof  of  his  feudal  lord.  At 
church,  when  he  gave  the  benediction,  his  hand 
was  always  stretched  out  first  toward  the  chapel  be- 
longing to  the  Du  Guenics,  where  the  armed  hand, 
their  device,  was  carved  on  the  keystone  of  the 
arch. 


BEATRIX  49 

"1  thought  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  had  ar- 
rived," said  the  cure,  seating  himself  after  taking 
the  baroness's  hand  and  kissing  it.  "She  is  falling 
into  bad  ways.  Is  the  fashion  of  dissipation  mak- 
ing headway  ?  I  see  that  Monsieur  le  Chevalier  is 
at  Les  Touches  again  this  evening." 

"Don't  say  anything  of  his  visits  before  Made- 
moiselle de  Pen-Hoel!"  said  the  old  maid  softly. 

"Ah!  mademoiselle,"  rejoined  Mariotte,  "can 
you  prevent  the  whole  town  from  gossiping.?" 

"What  do  they  say?"  asked  the  baroness. 

"The  girls,  the  gossips,  everybody  in  fact,  be- 
lieves that  he's  in  love  with  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches." 

"A  youngster  of  Calyste's  build  plies  his  trade 
by  winning  hearts,"  said  the  baron. 

"Here  is  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel,"  observed 
Mariotte. 

The  sand  in  the  courtyar.d  was,  in  fact,  heard  to 
crunch  at  that  moment  beneath  the  discreet  foot- 
steps of  the  lady  in  question,  who  was  attended  by 
a  small  servant  armed  with  a  lantern.  When  she 
caught  sight  of  the  servant,  Mariotte  transported  her 
paraphernalia  into  the  large  hall,  to  talk  with  him 
by  the  light  of  the  candle  in  the  lantern,  which  she 
burned  at  the  rich  and  miserly  maiden  lady's  ex- 
pense, thus  economizing  for  her  masters. 

Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  was  a  thin,  dried-up 
damsel,  yellow  as  the  parchment  of  the  ancient  reg- 
isters of  parliament,  she  was  wrinkled  like  a  lake 
ruffled  by  the  wind,  had  gray  eyes,  large  protruding 
4 


50  ,  BEATRIX 

teeth  and  hands  like  a  man's;  she  was  rather  short, 
slightly  crooked  and  perhaps  hunchbacked;  but  no 
one  had  ever  had  any  curiosity  to  discover  her  per- 
fections or  her  imperfections.  Dressed  in  the  same 
general  style  as  Mademoiselle  du  Guenic,  she  made 
a  commotion  among  an  enormous  quantity  of  skirts 
and  petticoats  when  she  tried  to  find  one  of  the  two 
openings  in  her  dress  through  which  her  pockets 
were  reached.  The  most  extraordinary  clinking  of 
keys  and  coins  was  thereupon  heard  beneath  those 
garments.  She  always  had  on  one  side  the  good 
housekeeper's  regular  supply  of  old  iron,  and  on  the 
other,  her  silver  snuff-box,  her  thimble,  her  knitting 
and  other  jangling  instruments.  Instead  of  the 
quilted  cap  worn  by  Mademoiselle  du  Guenic,  she 
wore  a  green  hat  in  which  she  was  in  the  habit  of 
inspecting  her  melon  patch;  it  had  passed,  like  the 
melons,  from  green  to  yellow ;  and,  as  to  its  shape, 
twenty  years  later  it  has  become  fashionable  at 
Paris  under  the  name  of  bibi.  The  hat,  made  under 
her  eyes  by  her  nieces,  was  of  green  Florence 
taffeta  purchased  at  Guerande,  and  with  a  frame 
which  she  renewed  every  five  years  at  Nantes, 
allowing  it  the  duration  of  a  legislature.  Her  nieces 
also  made  her  dresses,  which  were  always  cut  from 
the  same  patterns.  The  old  maid  still  carried  the 
cane  with  a  small  handle  used  by  ladies  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  reign  of  Marie-Antoinette.  She  belonged 
to  one  of  the  first  noble  families  in  Bretagne.  Her 
arms  bore  the  ermine  of  the  ancient  dukes.  In  her- 
self and  her  sister,  the  illustrious  Breton  family  of 


BEATRIX  51 

Pen-Hoel  would  come  to  an  end.  Her  younger  sis- 
ter had  married  a  Kergarouet,  who,  notwithstanding 
the  disapprobation  of  the  province,  added  the  name 
of  Pen-Hoel  to  his  own,  and  called  himself  the 
Vicomte  de  Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel. 

"Heaven  has  punished  him,"  said  the  old  maid; 
"he  has  nothing  but  daughters  and  the  name  of 
Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel  will  die  with  him." 

Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  possessed  about  seven 
thousand  francs  a  year  in  real  estate.  Having  been 
of  age  some  thirty-six  years,  she  managed  her  own 
property,  rode  about  on  horseback  to  inspect  it,  and 
displayed  in  everything,  the  firm  and  determined 
character  that  is  noticeable  in  most  hunchbacks. 
Her  avarice  was  admired  for  ten  leagues  around, 
and  not  a  word  was  ever  heard  in  disapprobation. 
She  kept  one  maid  and  the  small  servant  All  her 
expenses,  taxes  not  included,  did  not  amount  to  a 
thousand  francs  a  year.  Therefore  she  was  the  ob- 
ject of  much  cajolery  on  the  part  of  the  Kergarouet- 
Pen-Hoels,  who  passed  the  winters  at  Nantes  and 
the  summers  at  their  estate  on  the  bank  of  the  Loire, 
below  the  Indret  She  was  known  to  be  inclined  to 
leave  her  fortune  and  her  savings  to  that  one  of  her 
nieces  who  should  best  succeed  in  winning  her 
favor. 

Every  three  months,  one  of  the  four  Mesdemoi- 
selles  de  Kergarouet,  the  youngest  of  whom  was 
twelve  and  the  oldest  twenty,  came  to  pass  a  few 
days  with  the  old  maid.  As  she  was  a  close  friend 
of  Zephirine  du  Guenic,  and  had  been  brought  up  in 


52  BEATRIX 

adoration  of  the  Breton  grandeur  of  theDuGuenics, 
Jacqueline  de  Pen-Hoel  had,  when  Calyste  was 
born,  formed  the  project  of  transmitting  her  prop- 
erty to  the  chevalier  by  marrying  him  to  one  of  the 
nieces  with  whom  the  Vicomtesse  de  Kergarouet- 
Pen-Hoel  should  present  her.  She  thought  of 
redeeming  some  of  the  best  of  the  Du  Guenic 
estates  by  repaying  the  farmer  engagistes. 

When  avarice  fixes  its  mind  upon  a  definite 
object,  it  ceases  to  be  a  vice,  it  is  the  mechanism 
of  a  virtue,  its  excessive  privations  become  con- 
stant offerings,  it  has  in  short,  the  grandeur  of  a 
fixed  purpose  hidden  under  paltry  means.  Perhaps 
Zephirine  was  in  Jacqueline's  secret  Perhaps  the 
baroness,  whose  mind  was  wholly  given  over  to  her 
love  for  her  son  and  her  affection  for  his  father,  had 
guessed  something  when  she  saw  the  malicious  per- 
severance with  which  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel 
brought  with  her,  every  day,  Charlotte  de  Kerga- 
rouet,  her  favorite,  aged  fifteen.  The  cure  Grimont 
was  certainly  in  the  secret;  he  assisted  the  old 
maid  to  invest  her  money  to  good  advantage.  But 
though  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  had  three  hundred 
thousand  francs  in  gold,  the  figure  at  which  her  sav- 
ings were  estimated;  though  she  had  had  estates 
ten  times  greater  than  those  she  actually  possessed, 
the  Du  Guenics  would  not  have  allowed  themselves 
to  offer  her  any  attention  which  could  lead  the  old 
maid  to  believe  that  they  were  thinking  of  her  for- 
tune. With  an  admirable  feeling  of  pride,  charac- 
teristic  of  the   Breton,    Jacqueline    de   Pen-Hoel, 


BEATRIX  53 

happy  in  the  supremacy  assumed  by  her  old  friend 
Zephirine  and  the  Du  Guenics  generally,  always 
displayed  her  appreciation  of  the  honor  bestowed 
upon  her  when  the  daughter  of  the  Irish  kings  and 
Zephirine  deigned  to  pay  her  a  visit  She  went  so 
far  as  to  conceal  with  care  the  species  of  sacrifice  to 
which  she  consented  every  evening  by  allowing  her 
little  servant  to  burn  an  oribus  at  the  Du  Guenics, — 
oribus  is  the  name  given  to  the  candle  of  the  color 
of  spiced  bread  which  is  commonly  used  in  certain 
parts  of  the  West. 

Thus  this  aged  and  wealthy  maiden  lady  was  the 
personification  of  noble  birth,  of  pride  and  grandeur. 
At  the  moment  that  you  are  reading  her  portrait,  an 
indiscreet  remark  on  the  part  of  Abbe  Grimont  has 
revealed  the  fact  that,  on  the  evening  when  the 
old  baron,  the  young  chevalier  and  Gasselin  stole 
away,  armed  with  their  sabres  and  their  fowling- 
pieces,  to  join  Madame  in  La  Vendee,  to  Fanny's 
great  dismay  and  the  great  joy  of  the  Bretons,  Ma- 
demoiselle de  Pen-Hoel  had  handed  the  baron  the 
sum  of  ten  thousand  francs  in  gold, — an  enormous 
sacrifice  intensified  by  another  ten  thousand  francs, 
the  product  of  a  tithe  collected  by  the  cure,  which 
was  entrusted  to  the  old  partisan  to  be  offered  to  the 
mother  of  Henri  V.,  in  the  name  of  the  Pen-Hoels 
and  the  parish  of  Guerande.  Meanwhile,  she  treated 
Calyste  as  a  woman  would  who  believes  that  she  has 
some  claims  upon  him;  her  projects  justified  her  in 
keeping  an  eye  upon  him ;  not  that  she  affected  any 
narrow  ideas  in  the  matter  of  gallantry, — she  had 


54  BEATRIX 

the  indulgent  disposition  in  that  regard  of  the  old 
ladies  of  the  ancient  regime, — but  she  held  in  horror 
the  manners  introduced  by  the  Revolution.  Calyste, 
who  perhaps  would  have  made  some  progress  in  her 
esteem  by  love  adventures  with  Breton  maidens, 
would  certainly  have  lost  considerably  if  he  had 
yielded  to  what  she  called  novelties.  Mademoiselle 
de  Pen-Hoel,  who  would  have  produced  money  from 
her  treasure  chest  to  appease  a  girl  he  had  betrayed, 
would  have  esteemed  Calyste  a  dissipated  wretch  if 
she  had  seen  him  driving  a  tilbury  or  had  heard 
him  speak  of  going  to  Paris.  If  she  had  caught  him 
reading  unorthodox  reviews  or  newspapers,  no  one 
knows  of  what  she  would  have  been  capable.  In 
her  eyes,  the  new  ideas  were  like  interfering  with 
the  rotation  of  crops,  they  meant  ruin  under  the 
name  of  ameliorations  and  artificial  systems,  and 
property  mortgaged  sooner  or  later  as  the  result  of 
costly  experiments.  She  considered  prudence  the 
true  means  of  making  one's  fortune;  good  manage- 
ment, in  her  view,  consisted  in  heaping  up  her  buck- 
wheat, her  rye  and  her  hemp  in  her  granaries;  in 
waiting  for  a  rising  market  and  lying  obstinately 
upon  her  sacks,  at  the  risk  of  being  considered  a 
forestaller.  By  a  singular  chance,  she  had  often 
made  excellent  bargains  which  confirmed  her  the- 
ories. She  was  called  crafty,  but  she  was  without 
wit;  she  had  the  obstinacy  of  a  Dutchman,  how- 
ever, the  prudence  of  a  cat  and  the  persistence  of  a 
priest,  which,  in  such  a  routine-ridden  country,  is 
equivalent  to  the  most  profound  thought 


BEATRIX  55 

"Shall  we  see  Monsieur  du  Halga  to-night?"  asked 
the  old  lady,  taking  off  her  knitted  woolen  mittens, 
after  the  customary  exchange  of  compliments. 

"Yes,  mademoiselle,  I  saw  him  walking  his  dog 
up  and  down  the  mall,"  the  cure  replied. 

"Ah!  then  our  mouche  will  be  very  lively  to- 
night ?"  she  rejoined.  "Yesterday,  there  were  only 
four  of  us." 

At  the  word  moiiche,  the  cure  took  from  a  drawer 
in  one  of  the  chests,  a  little  round  basket  of  fine 
wicker-work,  ivory  counters  become  yellow  as 
Turkish  tobacco  by  twenty  years'  use,  and  a  pack 
of  cards  as  greasy  as  those  used  by  the  Saint-Nazaire 
customs  officers,  who  change  them  only  once  a  fort- 
night The  abbe  came  back  and  arranged  upon  the 
table  himself  the  necessary  counters  for  each  player 
and  placed  the  basket  beside  the  lamp  in  the  centre 
of  the  table,  with  childish  eagerness  and  the  manner 
of  a  man  accustomed  to  perform  this  little  service. 

A  sharp  military  knock  woke  the  echoes  in  the 
silent  depths  of  the  old  manor-house.  Mademoiselle 
de  Pen-Hoel's  little  servant  went  gravely  and 
opened  the  door.  Soon  the  long,  spare  body  of  the 
Chevalier  du  Halga,  formerly  Admiral  Kergarouet's 
flag  captain,  soberly  dressed  in  the  fashion  of  the 
day,  was  outlined  in  black  in  the  half-darkness  that 
still  reigned  on  the  stoop. 

"Come  in,  chevalier!"  cried  Mademoiselle  de 
Pen-Hoel. 

"The  altar  is  ready,"  said  the  cure. 

The  chevalier  was  a  man  in  delicate  health,  who 


56  BEATRIX 

wore  flannels  for  his  rheumatism,  a  black  silk  cap 
to  protect  his  head  from  the  damp,  a  spencer  to 
guarantee  his  precious  chest  against  the  sudden 
winds  that  cooled  the  atmosphere  of  Guerande.  He 
always  went  about  armed  with  a  gold-headed  cane 
to  drive  away  the  dogs  that  paid  unseasonable  court 
to  his  favorite  bitch.  Finical  as  a  coquette,  de- 
ranged by  the  slightest  obstacle,  speaking  low  to 
spare  the  remains  of  his  voice,  this  man  had  been 
one  of  the  most  intrepid  and  intelligent  officers  of 
the  old  navy.  He  had  been  honored  with  the  esteem 
of  the  Bailli  de  Suffren,  with  the  friendship  of  the 
Comte  du  Portenduere.  His  gallant  conduct  as  Ad- 
miral de  Kergarouet's  flag  captain  was  written  in 
legible  characters  upon  his  seamed  and  scarred  face. 
To  see  him  now,  no  one  would  recognize  the  voice 
that  dominated  the  tempest,  the  eye  that  scanned 
the  sea,  the  indomitable  courage  of  the  Breton 
sailor.  The  chevalier  did  not  smoke  or  swear ;  he 
was  as  calm  and  gentle  as  a  girl,  and  devoted  him- 
self to  his  dog  Thisbe  with  the  solicitude  of  an  old 
woman.  In  this  way  he  conveyed  the  most  exalted 
idea  of  his  past  and  gone  gallantry.  He  never  spoke 
of  the  surprising  deeds  that  had  astonished  the 
Comte  d'Estaing.  Although  he  had  the  manner  of 
an  invalid,  walked  as  if  he  were  afraid  of  crushing 
eggs  at  every  step,  complained  of  the  cool  wind,  of 
the  heat  of  the  sun  and  the  dampness  of  the  mist,  he 
displayed  two  rows  of  white  teeth  set  in  red  gums, 
which  reassured  one  as  to  his  disease — a  somewhat 
costly  disease,  by  the  way,  for  it  consisted  in  taking 


BEATRIX  57 

four  meals,  of  monastic  proportions,  each  day.  His 
frame,  like  the  baron's,  was  bony  and  absolutely 
indestructible,  covered  with  parchment  that  clings  to 
the  bones  as  the  skin  of  an  Arabian  horse  clings  to 
its  nerves,  which  seem  to  gleam  in  the  sunlight.  His 
complexion  had  retained  a  dark  brown  tint,  due  to 
his  travels  in  the  Indies,  from  which  he  had  brought 
back  neither  ideas  nor  adventures.  He  had  been  an 
emigre,  had  lost  his  fortune,  had  then  received  the 
Cross  of  Saint-Louis  and  a  pension  of  two  thousand 
francs  legitimately  due  to  his  services,  and  paid 
from  the  naval  retiring  fund.  The  slight  hypo- 
chondria which  led  him  to  invent  a  thousand  imag- 
inary ills  was  easily  explained  by  his  sufferings 
during  the  emigration.  He  had  served  in  the  Rus- 
sian navy  up  to  the  day  that  the  Emperor  Alexan- 
der attempted  to  employ  it  against  France,  when  he 
resigned  his  commission  and  went  to  live  at  Odessa 
with  the  Due  de  Richelieu,  with  whom  he  returned 
to  France,  and  who  procured  for  him  the  pension 
due  to  such  a  glorious  remnant  of  the  old  Breton 
navy. 

At  the  death  of  Louis  XVIII.,  at  which  time  he  re- 
turned to  Guerande,  the  Chevalier  du  Halga  became 
mayor  of  the  town.  The  cure,  the  chevalier  and 
Mademjoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  had  been  in  the  habit  for 
the  past  fifteen  years,  of  passing  their  evenings  at 
the  Du  Guenic  mansion,  which  was  also  frequented 
by  several  other  nobly  born  persons  of  the  town  and 
neighborhood.  Every  one  will  readily  detect  in 
the  Du  Guenics,  the  leaders  of  this  little  Faubourg 


58  BEATRIX 

Saint-Germain  of  the  department,  to  which  none  of 
the  ofificials  sent  thither  by  the  new  government  were 
admitted.  For  the  last  six  years  the  cure  always 
coughed  at  the  critical  passage  of  the  Domine,  sal- 
vumfac  regem.  Politics  was  always  at  that  point  in 
Guerande. 

The  mouche  is  a  game  played  with  five  cards  and 
one  turned-up,  which  fixes  the  trump  suit.  At 
every  hand,  the  player  is  free  to  take  the  chances  or 
to  stay  out.  If  he  stays  out,  he  risks  only  his  stake, 
for  as  long  as  there  are  no  forfeits  in  the  pot,  each 
player  puts  in  only  a  small  sum.  The  object  of  the 
game  is  to  take  tricks,  which  are  paid  for  in  pro- 
portion to  the  stake.  If  there  are  five  sous  in  the 
pot,  each  trick  is  worth  a  sou.  The  player  who  fails 
to  take  a  trick  is  put  in  the  mouche  ;  he  then  owes 
the  whole  amount  of  the  stake,  which  increases  the 
pot  for  the  following  hand.  The  mouches  due  are 
written  down ;  they  are  placed  in  the  pot  one  after 
another  in  the  order  of  their  size,  those  for  the 
largest  amount  taking  precedence  of  the  smalle. 
ones.  Those  who  stay  out  of  the  game  give  up 
their  cards  during  the  hand,  but  they  are  considered 
as  dead  cards.  The  cards  in  the  stock  may  be  taken 
in  exchange,  as  at  tcarVe^  by  the  players  in  order. 
Each  one  takes  as  many  cards  as  he  wants,  so  that 
the  first  and  second  players  may  absorb  the  stock 
between  them.  The  trump  card  belongs  to  the  dealer, 
who  is  the  last  to  exchange  his  cards ;  he  has  the 
right  to  take  it  in  exchange  for  one  of  the  cards  in 
his  hand.     There  is  one  terrible  card  called  MisHgris 


BEATRIX  59 

that  overtops  all  the  others.  Mistigris  is  the  knave 
of  clubs. 

This  game,  although  extremely  simple,  does  not 
lack  interest  The  cupidity  inherent  in  man  is  de- 
veloped therein,  as  well  as  diplomatic  shrewdness 
and  play  of  features.  At  the  Du  Guenics',  each 
player  took  twenty  counters  and  became  responsible 
for  five  sous,  which  carried  the  sum  total  of  the 
stake  to  five  liards  for  each  hand — a  large  sum  in 
the  eyes  of  all  concerned.  Assuming  that  you  had 
excellent  luck,  you  might  possibly  win  fifty  sous, 
which  was  more  than  anyone  at  Guerande  spent 
in  a  day.  Therefore  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel 
brought  to  this  game,  which  is  set  down  in  the  list 
published  by  the  Academie  as  being  surpassed  in 
harmlessness  only  by  La  Bataille,  a  passion  equal  to 
that  displayed  by  sportsmen  in  a  great  hunt  Ma- 
demoiselle Zephirine,  who  played  with  the  baroness 
on  equal  shares,  attached  no  slight  importance  to 
the  mouche.  To  invest  a  Hard  on  the  chance  of 
winning  five,  from  one  hand  to  another,  was  a 
financial  operation  of  vast  proportions  in  the  eyes  of 
the  old  miser,  and  one  in  which  she  expended  as 
much  mental  energy,  as  the  most  inveterate  specu- 
lator expends,  during  the  session  of  the  Bourse,  on 
the  rise  and  fall  of  shares. 

By  a  diplomatic  convention,  negotiated  in  Sep- 
tember 1825,  at  the  close  of  an  evening  during 
which  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  lost  thirty-seven 
sous,  the  game  was  to  cease  as  soon  as  any  player 
manifested  a  desire  to  that  end  after  losing  ten  sous. 


60  BEATRIX 

Politeness  would  not  permit  anyone  to  cause  a  player 
the  petty  vexation  of  watching  a  mouche  in  which 
he  had  no  part  But  all  the  passions  have  their 
Jesuitism.  The  chevalier  and  the  baron,  those  two 
old  politicians,  had  found  a  way  of  eluding  the 
treaty.  When  all  the  players  were  very  desirous  of 
prolonging  an  exciting  game,  the  bold  Chevalier  du 
Halga,  one  of  those  good  fellows  who  are  lavish  and 
open-handed  with  money  they  do  not  earn,  always 
offered  ten  counters  to  Zephirine  or  Mademoiselle 
de  Pen-Hoel,  when  one  or  both  of  them  had  lost  their 
five  sous,  on  condition  that  they  should  be  returned 
if  they  won.  An  old  bachelor  might  venture  to  take 
that  liberty  with  maiden  ladies.  The  baron  also 
offered  the  two  old  maids  ten  counters,  a  pretext  for 
continuing  the  game.  The  two  misers  always  ac- 
cepted, not  without  urging,  according  to  the  manners 
and  customs  of  their  kind.  Before  indulging  in  such 
prodigality  as  this,  the  baron  and  chevalier  must 
have  won,  otherwise  the  offer  would  have  taken  on 
the  character  of  an  insult 

The  game  was  always  very  animated  when  a 
Demoiselle  de  Kergarouet  was  at  her  aunt's  in  tran- 
situ— in  that  house  the  Kergarouets  had  never  suc- 
ceeded in  being  called  Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel  by  any- 
one, not  even  by  the  servants,  who  had  strict  orders 
on  that  point  The  aunt  spoke  to  her  niece  of  the 
moitche  at  the  Du  Guenics  as  a  very  great  pleasure. 
The  little  one  had  orders  to  be  amiable — by  no 
means  a  difficult  matter  when  she  saw  the  comely 
Calyste,  upon  whom  all  four  of  the   Demoiselles 


BEATRIX  6l 

de  Kergarouet  fairly  doted.  Those  young  women, 
who  had  been  reared  under  the  influence  of  modern 
civilization,  did  not  stop  at  five  sous,  and  piled 
mouche  upon  mouche.  Then  there  would  be  I.  O. 
U. 's  sometimes  amounting  to  a  hundred  sous,  and 
ranging  all  the  way  from  two  sous  and  a  half  to  ten 
sous.  Those  were  evenings  of  great  excitement 
for  the  old  blind  woman.  The  tricks  were  called 
mains  at  Guerande.  The  baroness  would  press  her 
sister-in-law's  foot  a  number  of  times  equal  to  the 
number  of  mains  that  were  sure,  according  to  her 
own  hand.  To  play  or  not  to  play,  according  to  the 
amount  in  the  pot,  caused  internal  discussions  in 
which  cupidity  struggled  with  fear.  They  asked 
one  another:  "Would  you  go  in?"  manifesting  a 
feeling  of  envy  of  those  who  had  sufficiently  good 
hands  to  tempt  fate,  and  a  feeling  of  despair  when 
they  felt  obliged  to  stay  out  If  Charlotte  de  Ker- 
garouet, who  was  generally  taxed  with  mild  impru- 
dence, was  lucky  in  her  rash  ventures,  her  aunt,  if 
she  had  won  nothing  herself,  would  be  quite  cool  to 
her  as  they  returned  home,  and  would  lecture  her ; 
she  had  too  much  decision  of  character,  a  young 
woman  ought  not  to  break  a  lance  with  venerable 
persons;  she  had  an  insolent  way  of  gathering  in 
the  stakes  or  of  playing  her  hand ;  good  manners 
required  a  little  more  reserve  and  modesty  on  a 
young  woman's  part;  it  was  not  proper  to  laugh  at 
other  people's  bad  luck,  etc.,  etc.  The  everlasting 
jokes,  which  were  made  a  thousand  times  a  year 
but  were  always  new,  about  the  team  that  must  be 


62  BEATRIX 

harnessed  to  the  basket  that  held  the  stakes  when  it 
was  too  heavily  laden,  were  passed  from  one  to 
another.  They  talked  of  a  team  of  oxen,  elephants, 
horses,  asses  and  dogs.  Even  after  twenty  years, 
no  one  noticed  the  repetition.  The  suggestion 
always  aroused  the  same  smile.  It  was  the  same 
with  the  remarks  that  the  pang  consequent  upon  the 
taking  in  of  a  full  pot  called  forth  from  those  who 
had  fattened  it  for  the  benefit  of  others.  The  cards 
were  dealt  with  automatic  slowness;  they  talked 
in  whispers.  These  excellent  and  noble-minded 
people  had  the  adorable  foible  of  being  suspicious  of 
one  another  at  play.  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel 
almost  always  accused  the  cure  of  cheating  when  he 
captured  a  pot. 

"It's  very  strange,"  the  cure  would  say,  "that  I 
never  cheat  when  I  am  in  the  mouche." 

No  one  of  the  party  ever  played  a  card  without 
profound  thought,  shrewd  glances  and  remarks  more 
or  less  astute,  ingenious  and  clever.  The  hands 
were,  as  may  readily  be  imagined,  interspersed 
with  tales  of  what  had  happened  in  the  town,  or 
with  discussions  upon  political  matters.  Often  the 
players  would  sit  for  a  full  quarter  of  an  hour,  en- 
gaged in  conversation,  holding  their  cards  like  a  fan 
against  their  stomachs.  If,  as  a  result  of  these  in- 
terruptions, there  happened  to  be  one  counter  short 
in  the  pot,  everybody  would  insist  that  he  had 
put  his  in.  Almost  invariably  the  chevalier  made 
up  the  deficit,  and  was  accused  by  all  of  thinking 
of  the  bells  in  his  ears,  of  his  head,  of  his  familiar 


BEATRIX  63 

spirits,  and  of  forgetting  his  stake.  When  the 
chevalier  had  put  in  his  counter,  old  Zephirine  or  the 
crafty  hunchback  would  be  seized  with  remorse; 
they  would  think  that  perhaps  they  had  not  put  in 
their  stakes,  they  would  believe  they  had  not,  or  be 
in  doubt  about  it;  but,  after  all,  the  chevalier  was 
rich  enough  to  stand  that  trifling  loss.  Often  the 
baron  would  forget  entirely  where  he  was,  when  the 
conversation  turned  on  the  misfortunes  of  the  royal 
family.  Sometimes  the  result  of  the  game,  then  it 
was  always  surprising  to  these  inveterate  gamblers, 
— would  show  that  all  were  on  exactly  the  same 
footing.  After  a  certain  number  of  hands,  each 
would  have  recovered  his  original  investment,  and 
they  would  separate,  the  hour  being  late,  without 
loss  or  gain,  but  not  without  emotion.  On  such 
painful  occasions,  the  air  would  be  full  of  com- 
plaints about  the  mouche ;  the  mouche  had  not  been 
exciting;  in  fact,  the  players  abused  the  mouche  as 
the  negroes  beat  the  moon  in  the  water  when  the 
weather  does  not  please  them.  The  evening  was 
considered  to  have  been  quite  colorless.  They  had 
worked  hard  for  a  small  result.  When,  at  the  time 
of  their  first  visit,  the  Vicomte  and  Vicomtesse  de 
Kergarouet  talked  about  whist  and  boston  as  being 
games  more  interesting  than  the  mouche  and  were 
encouraged  to  explain  them  by  the  baroness,  who 
was  excessively  bored  by  the  mouche,  the  Du 
Guenic  circle  entered  into  the  idea,  not  without 
crying  out  against  innovations;  but  it  was  im- 
possible   for    them    to    understand    those    games. 


64  BEATRIX 

which,  as  soon  as  the  Kergarouets  had  gone,  were 
voted  head-splitting  affairs,  algebraic  problems  of 
incredible  difficulty.  One  and  all  preferred  their 
dear  mouche,  their  sociable  little  mouche.  So  the 
moiiche  triumphed  over  the  modern  games  as  old- 
fashioned  things  triumphed  over  new  everywhere 
in  Bretagne. 

While  the  cure  was  dealing  the  cards,  the  baroness 
asked  the  Chevalier  du  Halga  the  same  questions 
that  had  been  asked  him  the  night  before,  touching 
his  health.  It  was  a  point  of  honor  with  the  chev- 
alier always  to  have  a  new  disease.  If  the  ques- 
tions always  resembled  one  another,  the  former  flag 
captain  had  a  great  advantage  over  them  in  his  re- 
plies. To-day  his  ribs  had  troubled  him.  It  was  a 
remarkable  fact  that  the  worthy  chevalier  never 
complained  of  his  wounds.  All  their  serious  conse- 
quences he  expected  and  knew  all  about;  but  fanci- 
ful troubles,  pains  in  the  head,  dogs  gnawing  at  his 
stomach,  bells  ringing  in  his  ears,  and  a  thousand 
other  familiar  spirits  disturbed  him  terribly;  he 
posed  as  incurably  ill  with  the  more  reason,  because 
the  physicians  knew  no  remedy  for  diseases  that 
had  no  existence. 

"Yesterday,  I  believe,  you  had  some  trouble  in 
your  legs,  had  you  not?"  said  the  cure,  gravely. 

"It  has  taken  a  leap,"  the  chevalier  replied. 

"From  the  legs  to  the  ribs?"  queried  Mademoi- 
selle Zephirine. 

"It  didn't  stop  on  the  way,  did  it?"  said  Made- 
moiselle de  Pen-Hoel,  with  a  smile. 


BEATRIX  65 

The  chevalier  bowed  solemnly,  with  a  negative 
gesture  comical  enough,  which  would  have  proved 
to  an  observer  that,  in  his  youth,  the  sailor  had 
been  clever,  loving  and  beloved.  Perhaps  his  fos- 
silized life  at  Guerande  concealed  many  memories. 
When  he  was  planted  aimlessly  on  his  heron  legs 
in  the  sunlight  on  the  mall,  watching  the  sea  or  his 
dog's  capers,  perhaps  he  was  living  again  in  the 
earthly  paradise  of  a  past  fertile  in  memories. 

"The  old  Due  de  Lenoncourt  is  dead,"  said  the 
baron,  recalling  the  passage  in  La  Quotidienne  at 
which  his  wife  had  stopped.  "Well,  the  king's 
first  gentleman  of  the  chamber  hasn't  been  slow  in 
going  to  join  his  master.     I  shall  soon  go  too." 

"My  dear,  my  dear !"  said  his  wife,  softly  patting 
her  husband's  bony,  callous  hand. 

"Let  him  talk,  sister,"  said  Zephirine;  "as  long 
as  I  am  above  ground,  he  won't  be  underneath :  he's 
my  junior." 

A  bright  smile  played  about  the  old  maid's  lips. 
When  the  baron  made  a  remark  of  that  kind,  the 
players  and  callers  always  looked  at  one  another 
with  emotion,  filled  with  anxiety  at  the  melancholy 
humor  of  the  King  of  Guerande.  Those  who  had 
come  to  call  on  him  would  say  to  one  another  as 
they  went  away:  "Monsieur  du  Guenic  was  de- 
pressed. Did  you  notice  how  he  falls  asleep?" 
And  the  next  day  all  Guerande  would  be  talking 
about  it.  "The  Baron  du  Guenic  is  failing!" 
That  phrase  opened  the  conversation  in  every 
household. 
5 


66  BEATRIX 

"Is  Thisbe  well?"  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel 
asked  the  chevalier,  as  soon  as  the  cards  were 
dealt 

"The  poor  beast  is  like  myself,"  said  the  chev- 
alier, "her  nerves  are  out  of  order,  she  continually 
lifts  up  one  of  her  paws  as  she  runs.  Like  this, 
look!" 

As  he  curled  up  one  of  his  arms  to  raise  it  in  imi- 
tation of  his  dog,  the  chevalier  showed  his  hand  to 
his  neighbor  the  hunchback,  who  wanted  to  know 
if  he  had  any  trumps  or  Mistigris.  It  was  an  open- 
ing ruse,  to  which  he  fell  a  victim. 

"Aha!"  said  the  baroness,  "the  end  of  Monsieur 
le  Cure's  nose  is  turning  white;  he  must  have  Mis- 
tigris." 

The  cure's  delight,  like  that  of  all  the  other 
players,  at  having  Mistigris  in  his  hand,  was  so 
keen,  that  the  poor  priest  could  not  conceal  it 
There  is  on  every  human  face  a  spot  where  the 
secrets  of  the  heart  betray  themselves,  and  these 
good  people,  being  accustomed  to  watch  one  another 
closely,  had  succeeded,  after  some  years,  in  discov- 
ering the  cure's  weak  point;  when  he  had  Mistigris, 
the  end  of  his  nose  turned  white.  The  others 
thereupon  took  good  care  not  to  play. 

"You  had  company  to-day,  had  you  not.?"  said 
the  chevalier  to  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel. 

"Yes,  one  of  my  brother-in-law's  cousins.  He 
surprised  me  by  telling  me  of  the  marriage  of  Ma- 
dame la  Comtesse  de  Kergarouet,  a  Mademoiselle 
de  Fontaine — " 


BEATRIX  67 

*'A  daughter  of  Grand-Jacques!  "  cried  the  chev- 
alier, who  had  never  left  his  admiral  during  his 
stay  in  Paris. 

"The  countess  is  his  heir;  she  married  a  former 
ambassador.  He  told  me  some  of  the  most  extraor- 
dinary things  about  our  neighbor,  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches, — so  extraordinary  that  I  wouldn't  believe 
them.  Calyste  would  not  be  so  assiduous  in  his 
visits  to  her,  he  has  enough  common  sense  to  notice 
such  monstrosities." 

"Monstrosities?"  repeated  the  baron,  aroused  by 
that  word. 

The  baroness  and  the  cure  exchanged  a  signifi- 
cant glance.  The  cards  were  dealt  and  the  old  maid 
had  Mistigris,  so  she  did  not  care  to  continue  the 
conversation,  well  pleased  to  conceal  her  satisfaction 
under  cover  of  the  general  amazement  caused  by  her 
remark. 

"It's  your  turn  to  play.  Monsieur  le  Baron,"  said 
she,  under  her  breath. 

"My  nephew  is  not  one  of  the  young  men  who 
are  fond  of  monstrosities,"  said  Zephirine,  thrusting 
her  needle  under  her  cap. 

"Mistigris!"  cried  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel, 
making  no  reply  to  her  friend. 

The  cure,  who  seemed  fully  informed  as  to  the 
relations  of  Calyste  and  Mademoiselle  des  Touches, 
did  not  enter  the  lists. 

"What  does  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  do  that  is 
so  extraordinary?"  the  baron  asked. 

"  She  smokes,"  said  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel. 


68  BEATRIX 

"That's  very  healthy,"  said  the  chevalier. 

*'Her  property?"  queried  the  baron. 

"She  is  running  through  her  property,"  the  old 
maid  replied. 

"Everybody  came  in,  everybody  is  in  the  mouche  ; 
I  have  the  king,  queen  and  knave  of  trumps,  Mis- 
tigris  and  a  king,"  said  the  baroness.  "The  stakes 
are  ours,  sister." 

This  hand,  won  without  playing  a  card,  crushed 
Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  to  the  earth,  and  she 
ceased  to  think  about  Calyste  and  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches. 

At  nine  o'clock,  only  the  baroness  and  the  cure 
remained  in  the  hall.  The  four  old  people  had  gone 
to  bed.  The  chevalier,  as  was  his  custom,  escorted 
Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  as  far  as  her  house  on 
the  public  square  of  Guerande,  indulging  in  reflec- 
tions upon  the  shrewd  play  of  the  last  hand,  on  their 
good  or  ill  luck,  or  upon  the  ever  new  delight  with 
which  Mademoiselle  Zephirine  buried  her  winnings 
in  her  pocket,  for  the  old  blind  woman  did  not  think 
of  repressing  the  expression  of  her  feelings  upon  her 
face.  Madame  du  Guenic's  preoccupation  was  the 
main  topic  of  conversation.  The  chevalier  had 
noticed  his  charming  Irish  friend's  fits  of  distraction. 
When  the  small  servant  had  ascended  the  steps  at 
her  door,  the  old  maid  replied  in  a  confidential  tone 
to  the  Chevalier  du  Halga's  conjectures  as  to  the 
cause  of  the  baroness's  extraordinary  demeanor, 
with  these  words,  pregnant  with  interest: 

"I  know  the  reason.     Calyste  is  lost  if  we  do  not 


BEATRIX  69 

marry  him  off  at  once.  He  is  in  love  with  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches,  an  actress." 

"In  that  case,  send  for  Charlotte." 

"My  sister  will  receive  my  letter  to-morrow," 
said  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel,  bidding  the  chevalier 
good- night. 

Judge,  from  this  specimen  of  the  normal  evening's 
entertainment  at  Guerande,  of  the  tumult  that  would 
be  produced  in  the  households  of  the  town,  by  the 
arrival,  the  sojourn,  the  departure,  or  even  the 
passing  through  of  a  stranger. 


When  no  sound  was  to  be  heard  in  the  baron's 
chamber  or  in  his  sister's,  Madame  du  Guenic 
looked  at  the  cure  who  was  still  playing  pensively 
with  the  counters. 

"I  have  guessed  that  at  last  you  share  my 
anxiety  concerning  Calyste,"  she  said. 

"Did  you  notice  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel's  prim 
manner  this  evening?"  the  cure  inquired. 

"Yes,"  was  the  reply. 

"She  has  the  kindest  intentions  concerning  our 
dear  Calyste,  I  know,"  continued  the  cure;  "she 
cherishes  him  as  if  he  were  her  own  son;  and  his 
conduct  in  La  Vendee  with  his  father,  and  Madame's 
enthusiastic  praise  of  his  devotion  have  increased 
Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel's  affection  for  him.  She 
will,  by  gift  inter  vivos,  assure  her  fortune  to 
whichever  of  her  nieces  Calyste  may  marry.  I 
know  that  you  have  a  much  wealthier  match  for 
your  dear  Calyste  in  Ireland ;  but  it  is  better  to 
have  two  strings  to  your  bow.  In  case  your  family 
should  not  undertake  to  arrange  a  marriage  for 
Calyste,  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel's  fortune  is  not 
to  be  despised.  You  can  always  find  a  wife  with 
seven  thousand  francs  a  year  for  the  dear  child ;  but 
you  won't  find  forty  years'  savings,  nor  estates  so 
managed  and  buildings  in  such  a  state  of  repair  as 
Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel's.  That  godless  creature, 
(71) 


72  BEATRIX 

Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  has  come  in  time  to  do 
much  harm.  We  have  found  out  something  about 
her  at  last," 

**Well?"  said  the  mother. 

"Oh!  she's  a  hussy,  a  strumpet,"  cried  the  cure, 
"a  woman  of  doubtful  morals,  devoted  to  the  stage, 
frequenting  actors  and  actresses,  squandering  her 
fortune  on  scribblers,  painters,  musicians,  the 
devil's  company,  in  a  word !  She  writes  her  books 
under  an  assumed  name,  by  which  she  is  better 
known,  they  say,  than  by  that  of  Felicite  des 
Touches.  A  veritable  mountebank,  who  has  never 
entered  a  church  since  her  first  communion  except 
to  look  at  statues  or  pictures.  She  has  spent  her 
fortune  decorating  Les  Touches  in  the  most  improper 
style,  to  make  of  it  a  paradise  ^  la  Mahomet,  where 
the  houris  are  not  women.  During  her  stay  there, 
more  expensive  wine  is  drunk  than  in  all  Guerande 
in  a  year.  The  Demoiselles  de  Bougniol  furnished 
lodgings  last  year  for  men  with  goat's  beards,  sus- 
pected of  being  Blues,  who  went  to  her  house  and 
sang  indecent  songs  fit  to  make  virtuous  maidens 
blush  and  weep.  That's  the  woman  Monsieur  le 
Chevalier  adores  at  this  moment!  If  the  creature 
expressed  a  wish  to-night  for  one  of  those  infamous 
books  in  which  the  atheists  of  the  present  day 
make  sport  of  everything,  the  chevalier  would  come 
home  and  saddle  his  horse  himself,  and  gallop  to 
Nantes  to  get  it  for  her.  I  doubt  if  Calyste  would 
do  as  much  for  the  Church.  Lastly,  this  Breton  is 
not  a  royalist     If  it  should  be  necessary  to  fire  a 


BEATRIX  73 

musket  for  the  good  cause,  and  if  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches,  or  Camille  Maupin,— that  is  her  literary 
name,  I  remember  now, — chose  to  keep  Calyste  by 
her  side,  the  chevalier  would  let  his  old  father  go 
alone." 

"No,"  said  the  baroness. 

"I  would  not  like  to  put  him  to  the  proof,  for  you 
might  suffer  too  much  by  it,"  rejoined  the  cure. 
"All  Guerande  is  turned  topsy-turvy  over  the  chev- 
alier's passion  for  this  amphibious  creature  who  is 
neither  man  nor  woman,  who  smokes  like  a  hussar, 
writes  like  a  journalist,  and  has  under  her  roof  at 
this  moment  the  most  venomous  of  all  scribblers, 
according  to  the  postmaster,  that  neutral  individual 
who  reads  the  newspapers.  There  has  been  talk 
about  him  at  Nantes.  This  very  morning,  this 
cousin  of  the  Kergarouets  who  would  like  to  arrange 
a  match  between  Charlotte  and  a  man  with  sixty 
thousand  francs  a  year,  went  to  see  Mademoiselle 
de  Pen-Hoel  and  turned  her  head  with  stories  about 
Mademoiselle  des  Touches  that  lasted  seven  hours. 
Quarter  to  ten  is  striking  on  the  church  clock  now 
and  Calyste  isn't  at  home;  he  is  at  Les  Touches 
and  perhaps  he  won't  return  till  morning." 

The  baroness  listened  to  the  cure,  who  had  un- 
consciously substituted  monologue  for  dialogue ;  he 
looked  at  this  lamb  of  his  flock  upon  whose  face 
deep  anxiety  could  be  plainly  read.  The  baroness 
blushed  and  trembled.  When  the  Abbe  Grimont 
saw  the  tears  starting  in  the  grief-stricken  mother's 
lovely  eyes,  he  was  deeply  moved. 


74  BEATRIX 

"I  will  see  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  to-morrow, 
let  your  mind  be  at  rest,"  said  he  in  a  consoling 
voice.  "Perhaps  it  isn't  as  bad  as  they  say;  I  will 
find  out  the  truth.  At  all  events,  Mademoiselle 
Jacqueline  has  confidence  in  me.  And  Calyste  is 
our  pupil,  you  know,  and  won't  let  the  demon  be- 
witch him.  He  will  not  disturb  the  peace  his 
family  now  enjoys,  nor  overturn  the  plans  we  are 
forming  for  his  future.  So  do  not  weep,  madame, 
all  is  not  lost;  a  single  error  is  not  vice." 

"You  have  simply  told  me  the  details,"  said  the 
baroness.  "Was  I  not  the  first  to  perceive  the 
change  in  Calyste?  A  mother  feels  very  keenly 
the  grief  of  ceasing  to  be  first  in  her  son's  heart,  or 
the  vexation  of  ceasing  to  be  alone  there.  This 
phase  in  a  man's  life  is  one  of  the  drawbacks  of 
maternity;  but,  although  I  expected  it,  I  did  not 
think  it  would  come  so  soon.  At  all  events,  I  would 
have  liked  him  to  take  into  his  heart  a  beautiful 
and  noble  creature,  and  not  an  actress,  a  female 
mountebank,  a  stage  woman,  an  authoress  accus- 
tomed to  feign  sentiments,  a  bad  woman  who  will 
deceive  him  and  make  him  unhappy.  She  has  had 
adventures,  I  suppose?" 

"With  several  men,"  said  Abbe  Grimont.  "And 
yet  the  atheistical  creature  was  born  in  Bretagne. 
She  dishonors  her  native  province.  1  will  preach 
on  the  subject  on  Sunday." 

"Don't  think  of  such  a  thing!"  said  the  baron- 
ess. "The  paludiers  and  the  peasants  would  be 
quite    capable    of   reporting    it    at    Les   Touches. 


BEATRIX  75 

Calyste  is  worthy  of  his  name,  he  is  a  Breton,  and 
some  harm  might  come  to  him  if  he  were  there,  for 
he  would  defend  her  as  if  she  were  the  Blessed  Vir- 
gin." 

"There's  ten  o'clock  striking  and  I  wish  you 
good-night,"  said  the  Abbe  Grimont,  lighting  the 
candle  in  his  lantern,  the  glass  of  which  was  clean 
and  the  metal  polished,  revealing  his  housekeeper's 
zealous  attention  to  small  matters  at  the  vicarage. 
"Who  would  have  dared  tell  me,"  he  continued, 
"that  a  young  man  reared  by  you,  instructed  by  me 
in  Christian  principles,  a  fervent  Catholic,  a  child 
who  has  lived  like  a  stainless  lamb,  would  plunge 
into  such  a  den  of  iniquity!" 

"Is  it  quite  beyond  doubt?"  said  the  mother. 
"But  how  could  a  woman  fail  to  love  Calyste?" 

"We  need  no  other  proofs  than  the  sorceress's 
stay  at  Les  Touches.  This  is  the  longest  time  she 
has  remained  there  during  the  twenty -four  years 
she  has  been  of  age.  Her  appearances  there,  for- 
tunately for  us,  have  been  of  short  duration." 

"A  woman  of  forty,"  said  the  baroness.  "I  have 
heard  it  said  in  Ireland  that  a  woman  of  that  age  is 
the  worst  possible  mistress  a  young  man  can  have. " 

"As  to  that,  I  have  no  knowledge,"  said  the  cure. 
"Indeed,  I  shall  die  in  my  ignorance." 

"Alas!  and  I  too,"  said  the  baroness  artlessly. 
"I  wish  now  that  I  had  truly  loved,  so  that  1  could 
watch  and  advise  and  console  Calyste." 

The  cure  did  not  cross  the  neat  little  courtyard 
alone,  for  the  baroness  accompanied  him  to  the  gate, 


76  BEATRIX 

hoping  to  hear  Calyste's  step  in  Guerande;  but  she 
heard  nothing  save  the  heavy  sound  of  the  cure's 
circumspect  walk,  which  grew  fainter  in  the  dis- 
tance and  finally  ceased  when  the  door  of  the 
vicarage  closed  with  what  seemed  a  loud  noise  in 
the  silent  town. 

The  poor  mother  returned  to  the  house  in  despair 
at  the  knowledge  that  the  whole  town  was  ac- 
quainted with  the  secret  that  she  thought  she  alone 
knew.  She  sat  down,  freshened  up  the  wick  of  the 
lamp  by  trimming  it  with  an  old  pair  of  scissors, 
and  took  up  the  tapestry  on  which  she  was  accus- 
tomed to  work  while  awaiting  Calyste.  The  baron- 
ess flattered  herself  that  she  could  thus  compel  her 
son  to  return  earlier,  to  pass  less  time  with  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches.  This  ruse  of  maternal  jeal- 
ousy was  of  no  avail.  From  day  to  day,  Calyste's 
visits  to  Les  Touches  became  more  frequent,  and  he 
returned  home  later  and  later  every  evening;  at 
last,  on  the  preceding  night,  the  chevalier  did  not 
return  until  midnight 

The  baroness,  absorbed  in  her  maternal  medita- 
tion, drew  her  threads  with  the  activity  peculiar  to 
persons  who  think  deeply  while  working  with  their 
hands.  Whoever  had  seen  her  thus,  bending  for- 
ward in  the  light  of  the  lamp,  beneath  the  ceilings 
of  that  great  hall,  four  centuries  old,  must  have 
admired  the  sublime  picture.  Fanny's  flesh  was 
so  transparent  that  one  could  read  her  thoughts 
upon  her  brow.  At  times,  pricked  by  the  curi- 
osity which  assails  the  purest  women,  she  asked 


BEATRIX  -J-J 

herself  what  diabolical  secrets  those  daughters  of 
Baal  possessed,  to  be  able  so  to  fascinate  men,  and 
to  make  them  forget  mother,  family,  country,  self- 
interest.  Again,  she  would  go  so  far  as  to  desire  to 
meet  the  woman,  in  order  to  judge  her  intelligently. 
She  measured  the  extent  of  the  ravages  that  the 
innovating  spirit  of  the  century,  depicted  by  the 
cure  as  so  dangerous  to  young  minds,  was  likely 
to  make  upon  her  only  child,  hitherto  as  sincere 
and  pure  as  an  innocent  young  girl,  whose  beauty 
could  not  have  been  more  fresh  than  his. 

Calyste,  that  magnificent  scion  of  the  oldest  of 
Breton  families  and  the  noblest  Irish  blood,  had  been 
reared  with  great  care  by  his  mother.  Down  to  the 
moment  when  the  baroness  placed  him  in  charge  of 
the  cure  of  Guerande,  she  was  sure  that  no  impure 
word,  no  evil  thought,  had  ever  contaminated  her 
son's  ears  or  his  mind.  The  mother,  having  fed 
him  with  her  own  milk  and  having  thus  given  him 
her  blood  twice  over,  was  able  to  present  him  in  a 
state  of  virgin  innocence  to  the  pastor,  who,  through 
veneration  for  the  family,  promised  to  give  him  a 
complete  Christian  education. 

Calyste  acquired  all  the  instruction  imparted  at 
the  seminary  where  the  Abbe  Grimont  had  received 
his  education.  The  baroness  taught  him  English. 
They  found,  not  without  difficulty,  a  master  in 
mathematics  among  the  government  officials  at 
Saint-Nazaire.  Calyste  was  necessarily  ignorant 
of  modern  literature,  the  past  and  present  progress 
of  the  sciences.     His  education  was  confined  to  the 


78  BEATRIX 

circumspect  history  and  geography  of  young  ladies' 
boarding-schools,  the  Latin  and  Greek  of  the  semi- 
naries, the  literature  of  the  dead  languages  and  a 
limited  selection  of  French  authors.  When,  at  the 
age  of  sixteen,  he  began  what  Abbe  Grimont  called 
his  philosophy,  he  was  no  less  pure  than  on  the  day 
Fanny  gave  him  in  charge  to  the  cure.  The  Church 
was  as  motherly  as  the  mother.  Without  being  a 
devotee  or  a  laughing-stock,  the  beloved  youth  was 
a  fervent  Catholic.  For  this  lovely,  innocent  son 
of  hers,  the  baroness  longed  to  arrange  a  happy,  ob- 
scure life.  She  expected  some  property,  two  or  three 
thousand  pounds  sterling,  from  an  old  aunt.  This 
sum,  added  to  the  present  fortune  of  the  Du  Gue- 
nics,  might  make  it  possible  for  her  to  find  for 
Calyste  a  wife  who  would  bring  him  twelve  or  fif- 
teen thousand  francs  a  year.  Charlotte  de  Kerga- 
rouet  with  her  aunt's  fortune,  a  rich  Irish  girl,  or 
any  other  heiress, — it  was  a  matter  of  indifference 
to  the  baroness;  she  knew  nothing  of  love;  she, 
like  all  those  about  her,  looked  upon  marriage  as  a 
means  of  acquiring  fortune.  Passion  was  unknown 
to  these  Catholic  hearts,  to  these  old  people  whose 
minds  were  bent  exclusively  upon  God,  the  king, 
their  salvation  and  their  fortune.  No  one  will  be 
surprised  therefore  at  the  gravity  of  the  thoughts 
that  served  as  an  accompaniment  to  the  wounded 
feelings  in  this  mother's  heart,  who  lived  as  much 
for  her  son's  material  interests  as  for  his  affection. 
If  the  young  household  would  listen  to  the  voice  of 
wisdom,  the  Du  Guenics  in  the  second  generation, 


BEATRIX  79 

by  enduring  privation,  by  economizing  as  people 
can  economize  in  the  provinces,  might  redeem  their 
estates  and  regain  the  lustre  of  wealth.  The  baron- 
ess hoped  for  a  long  life  in  order  to  see  the  dawn  of 
better  days.  Mademoiselle  du  Guenic  had  under- 
stood and  acquiesced  in  this  plan,  which  Mademoi- 
selle des  Touches  was  now  threatening  to  overturn. 
The  baroness  in  dismay  heard  the  clock  strike 
twelve;  for  another  hour  she  was  a  prey  to  horrible 
terrors,  for  at  the  stroke  of  one,  Calyste  had  not 
appeared. 

"Would  he  stay  there.?"  she  said  to  herself.  "It 
would  be  the  first  time.     Poor  child !" 

At  that  moment  Calyste's  step  woke  the  echoes 
of  the  lane.  The  poor  mother,  in  whose  heart  joy 
took  the  place  of  anxiety,  flew  from  the  hall  to  the 
gate  and  opened  it  for  her  son. 

"Oh!"  cried  Calyste  in  a  distressed  tone,  "why 
do  you  sit  up  for  me,  dearest  mother  ?  I  have  my 
key  and  a  tinder-box." 

"You  know,  my  child,  that  it  is  impossible  for 
me  to  sleep  when  you  are  out,"  said  she,  kissing 
him. 

When  the  baroness  was  in  the  hall,  she  looked  at 
her  son,  to  divine,  from  the  expression  of  his  face, 
his  evening's  experiences;  but  he  caused  her,  as 
always,  the  emotion  that  habit  does  not  lessen,  and 
that  all  fond  mothers  feel  at  the  sight  of  the  human 
masterpiece  which  they  have  made  and  which  dims 
their  sight  for  a  moment 

In  addition  to  the  black  eyes,  full  of  energy  and 


8o  BEATRIX 

sunlight,  which  he  inherited  from  his  father,  Calyste 
had  his  mother's  lovely  fair  hair,  aquiline  nose, 
beautiful  mouth,  short  fingers,  smooth  skin,  and 
delicate,  pure  complexion.  Although  he  greatly 
resembled  a  girl  disguised  as  a  man,  he  was  as 
strong  as  Hercules.  His  muscles  were  as  elastic 
and  powerful  as  steel  springs,  and  the  singular 
contrast  afforded  by  his  black  eyes  was  not  with- 
out charm.  His  beard  had  not  yet  grown.  Such 
delay  in  that  respect  denotes  great  longevity,  so 
it  is  said.  The  chevalier  was  dressed  in  a  short 
frock  coat  of  black  velvet,  like  his  mother's  dress, 
and  embellished  with  silver  buttons;  he  wore  a 
blue  silk  neckerchief,  pretty  gaiters  and  pantaloons 
of  a  grayish  drill.  His  snow-white  forehead  seemed 
to  bear  the  marks  of  great  fatigue,  and  yet  it  only 
indicated  the  weight  of  depressing  thoughts.  As 
she  had  no  reason  to  suspect  the  pangs  that  were 
devouring  Calyste's  heart,  the  mother  attributed 
this  fleeting  change  in  his  expression  to  happiness. 
Nevertheless,  Calyste  was  as  handsome  as  a  Greek 
god,  but  handsome  without  conceit;  in  the  first 
place,  he  was  used  to  seeing  his  mother,  and  in  the 
second  place,  he  gave  but  little  thought  to  beauty 
which  he  knew  to  be  unavailing. 

"And  so,"  she  thought,  "those  lovely,  pure 
cheeks,  in  which  the  rich  young  blood  flows  freely 
through  a  network  of  countless  veins,  belong  to 
another  woman,  who  is  mistress  too  of  that  girlish 
brow !  Passion  will  distort  it  and  dim  those  beauti- 
ful eyes,  humid  as  a  child's!" 


BEATRIX  8l 

This  bitter  thought  oppressed  the  baroness's  heart 
and  spoiled  her  pleasure.  It  may  appear  strange  to 
those  versed  in  arithmetic  that,  in  a  family  of  six 
persons,  compelled  to  live  upon  an  income  of  three 
thousand  francs,  the  son  should  have  a  velvet  coat 
and  the  mother  a  velvet  dress;  but  Fanny  O'Brien 
had  wealthy  aunts  and  relatives  in  London,  who  re- 
called themselves  to  the  Breton  baroness's  memory 
by  occasional  presents.  Several  of  her  sisters, 
who  had  married  well,  were  sufficiently  interested 
in  Calyste  to  be  on  the  lookout  for  an  heiress  for 
him,  knowing  him  to  be  as  handsome  and  noble  a 
youth  as  Fanny,  their  exiled  favorite,  was  a  lovely 
and  noble  woman. 

"You  stayed  at  Les  Touches  longer  than  you  did 
last  night,  my  darling,"  said  the  mother  at  last,  in  a 
trembling  voice. 

"Yes,  dear  mother,"  he  replied,  without  vouch- 
safing any  explanation. 

This  curt  reply  brought  a  cloud  to  the  baroness's 
brow  and  she  postponed  the  explanation  until  the 
morrow.  When  mothers  conceive  such  anxious 
thoughts  as  those  that  oppressed  the  baroness  at  that 
moment,  they  almost  tremble  before  their  sons,  they 
feel  instinctively  the  effects  of  the  great  emancipa- 
tion of  love,  they  realize  all  that  that  sentiment  is 
going  to  take  from  them ;  but  at  the  same  time,  they 
derive  some  pleasure  from  the  knowledge  that  their 
sons  are  happy:  there  is  a  sort  of  battle  in  their 
hearts.  Although  the  result  may  be  that  their  son 
increases  his  stature,  becomes  more  of  a  man,  real 
6 


82  BEATRIX 

mothers  do  not  relish  this  tacit  abdication ;  they  pre- 
fer their  sons  to  remain  small  and  under  their  wing. 
Therein,  perhaps,  lies  the  secret  of  a  mother's  pref- 
erence for  a  weak,  disgraced  or  unfortunate  child. 

"You  are  tired,  dear  child,  go  to  bed,"  said  she, 
restraining  her  tears. 

When  a  mother  does  not  know  everything  that 
her  son  does,  she  thinks  that  all  is  lost,  if  she  loves 
as  dearly  as  Fanny  did,  and  is  loved  as  she  was. 
The  patient  endeavors  of  twenty  years  might  be 
made  useless.  This  masterpiece  of  noble,  virtuous, 
and  religious  education,  Calyste,  might  be  ruined 
forever;  the  happiness  of  her  life,  so  carefully  pre- 
pared, might  be  destroyed  forever  by  a  woman. 

The  next  day  Calyste  slept  until  noon,  for  his 
mother  gave  orders  that  he  should  not  be  awakened ; 
and  Mariotte  served  to  the  spoiled  child  his  breakfast 
in  bed.  The  inflexible,  quasi-monastic  rules  by 
which  the  hours  for  meals  were  regulated  were  set 
aside  at  the  caprice  of  the  chevalier.  So,  when  they 
wanted  to  obtain  Mademoiselle  du  Guenic's  bunch 
of  keys  in  order  to  procure  something  outside  of  the 
regular  refection  that  would  have  necessitated  inter- 
minable explanations,  there  was  no  other  way  than 
by  pretending  that  Calyste  had  a  fancy  for  it. 

About  one  o'clock,  the  baron,  his  wife  and  made- 
moiselle were  assembled  in  the  living-room,  for 
they  dined  at  three.  The  baroness  had  taken  up  La 
Quotidienne  and  was  reading  the  rest  of  it  to  her 
husband,  who  was  always  a  little  wider  awake  be- 
fore his  meals.     Just  as  Madame  du  Guenic  had 


BEATRIX  83 

finished,  she  heard  her  son's  step  on  the  second  floor, 
and  she  let  the  paper  fall,  saying: 

*'Calyste  is  probably  going  to  dine  at  Les  Touches 
again  to-day;  he  is  dressing." 

"What  harm  if  it  amuses  the  child?"  said  the 
old  maid,  taking  a  silver  whistle  from  her  pocket 
and  whistling. 

Mariotte  passed  through  the  turret  and  appeared 
in  the  doorway,  which  was  hidden  by  a  portiere  of 
the  same  silk  material  as  the  curtains. 

"If  you  please,"  said  she,  "do  you  wish  any- 
thing?" 

"The  chevalier  dines  at  Les  Touches,  don't  cook 
the  fish." 

"But  we  don't  know  yet,"  said  the  baroness. 

"You  seem  annoyed  about  it,  sister,  I  can  tell 
from  your  tone,"  said  the  blind  woman. 

"Monsieur  Grimont  has  finally  learned  some  very 
grave  facts  about  Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  who 
has  changed  our  dear  Calyste  sadly  within  a 
year." 

"In  what?"  the  baron  inquired. 

"Why,  he  reads  all  kinds  of  books." 

"Aha!"  said  the  baron,  "then  that's  the  reason 
he  neglects  the  hunt  and  his  horse." 

"Her  morals  are  reprehensible  and  she  assumes  a 
man's  name,"  Madame  du  Guenic  continued. 

"A  nom  de  guerre,"  rejoined  the  old  man.  "I 
was  called  L'Intimi,  the  Comte  de  Fontaine  Grand- 
Jacques,  the  Marquis  de  Montauran  Le  Gars.  I 
was  the  friend  of  Ferdinand,  who  stood  out  for  the 


84  BEATRIX 

king  as  I  did.  Those  were  the  good  old  times !  we 
fired  our  muskets,  and  we  amused  ourselves  all  the 
same,  one  way  and  another." 

This  reminiscence  of  war,  which  took  the  place 
of  paternal  anxiety,  saddened  Fanny  for  a  moment. 
The  cure's  disclosures  and  her  son's  failure  to  con- 
fide in  her  had  prevented  her  from  sleeping. 

"If  Monsieur  le  Chevalier  should  fall  in  love  with 
Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  where  would  be  the 
harm.!"'  said  Mariotte.  "The  hussy  has  thirty 
thousand  crowns  a  year,  and  she's  beautiful." 

"What's  that  you  say,  Mariotte?"  cried  the  old 
man.  "A  Du  Guenic  marry  a  Des  Touches!  The 
Des  Touches  hadn't  risen  to  be  our  squires  when  Du 
Guesclin  looked  upon  an  alliance  with  us  as  a  sig- 
nal honor." 

"A  woman  with  a  man's  name — Camille  Mau- 
pin !"  said  the  baroness. 

"The  Maupins  are  an  old  family,"  said  the  old 
man;  "they're  from  Normandie,  and  bear  gules 
with  three — "  He  paused.  "But  she  can't  be  a 
Des  Touches  and  a  Maupin  at  the  same  time." 

"She  calls  herself  Maupin  on  the  stage." 

"A  Des  Touches  could  never  be  an  actress,"  said 
the  old  man.  "If  I  didn't  know  you,  Fanny,  I 
should  think  you  were  mad." 

"She  writes  plays,  books,"  said  the  baroness. 

"Books?"  exclaimed  the  old  man,  looking  at  his 
wife  in  as  great  surprise  as  if  she  had  spoken  of  a 
miracle.  "I  have  heard  it  said  that  Mademoiselle 
Scuderi  and  Madame  de  Sevigne  wrote,  and  it  is  not 


BEATRIX  85 

much  to  their  credit;  but  for  such  prodigies  nothing 
less  than  Louis  XIV.  and  his  court  would  suffice." 

"You  dine  at  Les  Touches,  don't  you,  monsieur .?" 
said  Mariotte  to  Calyste,  who  appeared  at  that 
moment 

"Probably,"  the  young  man  replied. 

Mariotte  was  not  inquisitive,  she  was  one  of  the 
family;  she  went  out  without  seeking  to  hear  the 
question  Madame  du  Guenic  was  about  to  put  to 
Calyste. 

"You  are  going  to  Les  Touches  again,  my 
Calyste?"  She  emphasized  the  word  my.  "And 
Les  Touches  is  not  a  virtuous,  decent  house.  Its 
mistress  leads  a  wild  life,  she  will  corrupt  our 
Calyste.  Camille  Maupin  has  given  him  many 
books  to  read,  she  has  had  many  love  affairs !  And 
you  know  all  this,  bad  boy,  and  you  said  nothing  of 
it  to  your  old  friends!" 

"The  chevalier  is  close-mouthed,"  interposed  the 
father;  "an  old-fashioned  virtue." 

"Too  close-mouthed,"  said  the  jealous  baroness, 
observing  the  flush  that  overspread  her  son's 
brow. 

"My  dear  mother,"  said  Calyste,  kneeling  at  her 
feet,  "I  do  not  think  it  is  necessary  to  make  public 
my  defeats.  Mademoiselle  des  Touches — or  Ca- 
mille Maupin,  if  you  choose — rejected  my  suit 
a  year  and  a  half  ago,  at  the  time  of  her  last  stay 
here.  She  laughed  at  me  mildly  then;  she  said  she 
was  old  enough  to  be  my  mother ;  a  woman  of  forty 
who  loved  a  minor  committed  a  sort  of  incest  and 


86  BEATRIX 

that  she  was  incapable  of  such  depravity.  In  fact, 
she  made  a  thousand  jocose  remarks,  which  crushed 
me  completely,  for  she  is  as  bright  and  witty  as  an 
angel.  And  so,  when  she  saw  me  weeping  scalding 
tears,  she  consoled  me  by  offering  me  her  friendship 
in  the  noblest  way.  She  has  even  more  heart  than 
talent;  she  is  as  generous  as  you  are.  I  am  like  her 
child  now.  When  she  came  back  here  and  I  learned 
that  she  loved  another  man,  I  resigned  myself  to 
my  fate.  Don't  repeat  the  calumnies  that  are  cur- 
rent about  her;  Camille  is  an  artist,  she  has  genius, 
and  leads  one  of  those  exceptional  existences  which 
cannot  fairly  be  judged  as  ordinary  existences  are." 

"My  child,"  said  the  devout  Fanny,  "nothing  can 
exempt  a  woman  from  conducting  herself  as  the 
Church  directs.  She  fails  in  her  duty  toward  God 
and  toward  society  by  abjuring  the  beneficent  re- 
ligion of  her  sex.  A  woman  sins  even  in  going  to 
the  theatre;  but  to  write  the  impious  things  that  the 
actors  repeat,  to  go  about  the  world,  sometimes  with 
an  enemy  of  the  Pope,  sometimes  with  a  musician, 
— ah!  you  will  find  it  difficult,  Calyste,  to  convince 
me  that  such  performances  are  deeds  of  faith,  hope 
or  charity.  Her  fortune  was  given  her  by  God  to 
do  good  with;  what  use  does  she  make  of  it?" 

Calyste  suddenly  sprang  to  his  feet,  looked  his 
mother  in  the  face  and  said : 

"Mother,  Camille  is  my  friend;  I  cannot  hear  her 
spoken  of  in  this  way,  for  I  would  give  my  life  for 
her." 

*'Your  life.?"  said  the  baroness,  looking  at  her  son 


BEATRIX  87 

with  an  expression  of  dismay.  "Your  life  belongs 
to  us  all!" 

"My  handsome  nephew  said  something  then  that 
I  don't  understand,"  said  the  old  blind  woman  softly, 
turning  toward  him. 

"Where  did  he  learn  it.?"  said  the  mother.  "At 
Les  Touches." 

"But,  my  darling  mother,  she  found  me  as  igno- 
rant as  a  carp." 

"You  knew  all  that  was  essential  since  you  knew 
the  duties  religion  teaches  us,"  the  baroness  re- 
plied. "Ah!  that  woman  will  destroy  your  noble, 
blessed  faith." 

The  old  maid  rose  and  extended  her  hand  solemnly 
toward  her  brother,  who  had  fallen  asleep. 

"Calyste,"  said  she,  in  a  voice  that  came  from 
the  heart,  "your  father  never  opened  any  books,  he 
speaks  the  Breton  patois,  but  he  fought  for  his  king 
and  his  God  in  time  of  danger.  Educated  men  did 
the  harm  and  the  learned  gentlemen  deserted  their 
country.     Learn  the  lesson,  if  you  choose." 

She  resumed  her  seat  and  her  knitting  with  the 
activity  due  to  internal  emotion.  Calyste  was 
deeply  impressed  by  this  discourse  ^  la  Phocion. 

"Indeed,  my  angel,  I  have  a  presentiment  that 
some  misfortune  will  come  to  you  in  that  house," 
said  the  mother  in  an  altered  voice,  her  eyes  filling 
with  tears. 

"Who  causes  Fanny  to  weep.?"  cried  the  old  man, 
waking  with  a  start  at  the  sound  of  his  wife's 
voice. 


88  BEATRIX 

He  glanced  at  his  sister,  his  son  and  the  baroness 
successively. 

"What  is  it?" 

**Nothing,  my  dear,"  the  baroness  replied. 

**Mamma,"  said  Calyste  in  a  low  voice  in  his 
mother's  ear,  "it  is  impossible  for  me  to  explain  at 
this  moment;  but  this  evening  we  will  have  a  talk 
together.  When  you  know  all,  you  will  bless  Ma- 
demoiselle des  Touches." 

"Mothers do  not  like  to  curse,"  replied  the  baron- 
ess, "and  I  would  not  curse  the  woman  who  truly 
loved  my  Calyste." 

The  young  man  bade  his  old  father  adieu  and  left 
the  house.  The  baron  and  his  wife  left  their  seats 
to  watch  him  cross  the  courtyard,  open  the  gate  and 
disappear.  The  baroness  did  not  take  up  the  news- 
paper again,  she  was  too  deeply  moved.  In  that 
tranquil,  unruffled  life,  the  short  discussion  that  had 
just  taken  place  was  equivalent  to  a  quarrel  in 
another  family.  Although  somewhat  allayed,  the 
mother's  anxiety  was  not  by  any  means  dissipated. 
Whither  was  this  friendship,  that  might  claim 
Calyste's  life  and  endanger  it,  likely  to  lead  him? 
How  could  the  baroness  have  reason  to  bless  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches  ?  These  two  questions  were 
as  momentous  to  that  simple  heart  as  the  fiercest 
revolution  is  to  trained  diplomatists.  Camille 
Maupin  was  a  revolution  in  that  calm,  sunny  house- 
hold. 

"I  am  afraid  that  woman  is  spoiling  him  for  us," 
she  said,  taking  up  the  newspaper  once  more. 


LES    TOUCHES    DISCUSSED    AT 
DU  GUENICS 


The  old  maid  rose  and  extended  her  hand  solemnly 
toivard  her  brother,  zvho  had  fallen  asleep. 

" Calyste"  said  she,  in  a  voice  that  came  from  the 
heart,  ''your  father  never  opened  any  books,  he 
speaks  the  Breton  patois,  but  he  fought  for  his  king 
and  his  God  in  time  of  danger.  Educated  men  did 
the  harm  and  the  learned  gentlemen  deserted  their 
country.     Learn  the  lesson,  if  you  choosey 


AOAiiM.Men^A 


BEATRIX  89 

"My  dear  Fanny,"  said  the  old  baron  with  a 
knowing  air,  "you  are  too  much  of  an  angel  to 
understand  these  matters.  Mademoiselle  des  Touches 
is  as  black  as  a  crow,  they  say,  and  as  strong  as  a 
Turk ;  she  is  forty  years  old  and  our  Calyste  is  pay- 
ing court  to  her.  He  will  tell  a  few  very  honorable 
little  fibs  to  conceal  his  good  fortune.  Let  him 
amuse  himself  with  his  first  deception  in  the  matter 
of  love." 

"If  it  were  any  other  woman — " 

"But,  my  dear  Fanny,  if  the  woman  were  a  saint, 
she  wouldn't  accept  our  son's  homage." 

The  baroness  again  took  up  her  journal. 

"I  will  go  and  see  her,"  said  the  old  man,  "and 
then  I  can  tell  you  all  about  her." 

This  remark  can  have  no  bearing  except  for  ref- 
erence. After  reading  Camille  Maupin's  biography, 
imagine  the  old  baron  engaged  in  a  contest  with 
that  illustrious  woman. 


The  town  of  Guerande  which  for  two  months 
past  had  seen  Calyste,  its  flower  and  its  pride,  going 
every  day,  in  the  morning  or  evening,  and  often 
both  morning  and  evening,  to  Les  Touches,  believed 
that  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  was  passionately  in 
love  with  the  handsome  boy,  and  that  she  was  prac- 
tising witchcraft  upon  him.  More  than  one  maiden 
and  more  than  one  young  woman  were  asking  them- 
selves what  privileges  old  women  enjoyed  that  they 
could  exert  such  absolute  dominion  over  an  angel. 
And  so,  when  Calyste  passed  along  Grand  Rue  to 
leave  the  town  by  the  Le  Croisic  gate,  more  than 
one  pair  of  eyes  were  fixed  upon  him. 

It  becomes  necessary  now  to  explain  the  rumors 
that  were  hovering  over  the  personage  Calyste  was 
going  to  visit  These  rumors,  added  to  by  Breton 
gossip,  envenomed  by  public  ignorance,  had  reached 
the  cure's  ears.  The  tax-collector,  the  justice  of 
the  peace,  the  chief  of  the  customs  service  at  Saint- 
Nazaire  and  other  well-informed  people  of  the  dis- 
trict had  not  removed  Abbe  Grimont's  apprehensions 
by  telling  him  of  the  strange  life  of  the  female  artist 
who  concealed  her  identity  under  the  name  of  Ca- 
mille  Maupin.  She  did  not  devour  little  children, 
she  did  not  kill  her  slaves  like  Cleopatra,  she  did 
not  order  men  to  be  thrown  into  the  river  as  the 
heroine  of  La  Tour  de  Nesle  is  falsely  accused  of 

(91) 


92  BEATRIX 

doing;  but,  in  the  eyes  of  Abbe  Grimont,  this  mon- 
strous creature,  who  partook  of  the  nature  of  the 
siren  and  the  atheist,  formed  an  immoral  combina- 
tion of  woman  and  philosopher,  and  outraged  all  the 
social  laws  devised  to  repress  or  to  utilize  the  in- 
firmities of  the  fair  sex. 

Just  as  Clara  Gazul  is  the  feminine  pseudonym 
of  a  man  of  intellect,  George  Sand,  the  masculine 
pseudonym  of  a  woman  of  genius,  so  Camille  Mau- 
pin  was  the  mask  behind  which  a  charming  young 
woman  long  concealed  her  identity — a  Breton  of  ex- 
cellent family,  named  Felicite  des  Touches,  the 
woman  who  caused  the  Baronne  du  Guenic  and  the 
good  cure  of  Guerande  such  keen  anxiety.  This 
family  has  no  connection  with  the  Des  Touches  of 
Touraine,  to  which  the  Regent's  ambassador  be- 
longs,— a  man  more  celebrated  to-day  by  reason  of 
his  literary  fame  than  by  reason  of  his  diplomatic 
talents. 

Camille  Maupin,  one  of  the  few  famous  women  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  was  long  supposed  to  be  a 
man  because  of  the  virility  of  her  early  perform- 
ances. Everybody  is  familiar  to-day  with  the  two 
volumes  of  plays,  not  of  a  nature  to  be  put  upon 
the  stage,  which  were  written  in  the  style  of 
Shakespeare  or  Lope  de  Vega  and  which  created  a 
sort  of  literary  revolution  when  they  were  published 
in  1822,  at  the  time  that  the  great  question  of  the 
comparative  merits  of  romanticists  and  classicists 
was  being  hotly  discussed  in  the  newspapers,  at  the 
clubs  and  at  the  Academy.     Since  then,  Camille 


BEATRIX  93 

Maupin  has  produced  several  plays  and  a  novel 
which  have  not  belied  the  success  achieved  by  her 
first  production,  now  too  generally  forgotten. 

If  we  explain  by  what  chain  of  circumstances  the 
masculine  incarnation  of  a  young  girl  was  brought 
about,  and  how  Felicite  des  Touches  became  a  man 
and  an  author ;  why,  more  fortunate  than  Madame 
de  Stael,  she  remained  free  and  is  thus  the  more 
pardonable  for  her  celebrity — shall  we  not  thereby 
gratify  the  curiosity  of  many  readers  and  justify 
one  of  those  monstrosities  which  rear  their  heads  in 
the  history  of  mankind  like  monumental  columns, 
and  whose  glory  is  exaggerated  by  their  rarity  ?  for 
we  can  hardly  count  twenty  great  women  in  twenty 
centuries.  And  so,  although  she  plays  only  a  sec- 
ondary part  in  this  narrative,  inasmuch  as  she 
had  great  influence  over  Calyste  and  plays  an  im- 
portant role  in  the  literary  history  of  our  epoch,  no 
one  will  regret  having  paused  before  this  figure  a 
little  longer  than  the  modern  poetic  art  would  war- 
rant 

Mademoiselle  Felicite  des  Touches  was  left  an 
orphan  in  1793.  Her  property  thus  escaped  the 
confiscation  which  her  father  and  mother  would 
doubtless  have  incurred.  The  former  died  on  the 
tenth  of  August,  slain  on  the  threshold  of  the  palace 
among  the  defenders  of  the  king,  to  whose  side  his 
rank  of  major  in  the  Gardes  de  la  Porte  summoned 
him.  Her  brother,  a  young  member  of  the  body- 
guard, was  massacred  at  Les  Carmes.  Mademoi- 
selle des  Touches  was  two  years  old  when  her 


94  BEATRIX 

mother  died  of  grief  a  few  days  after  this  second 
disaster.  On  her  deathbed,  Madame  des  Touches 
entrusted  her  daughter  to  her  sister,  a  nun  at  the 
convent  of  Chelles.  Madame  de  Faucombe,  the 
nun,  wisely  took  the  orphan  to  Faucombe,  an  estate 
of  considerable  size  near  Nantes,  belonging  to  Ma- 
dame des  Touches,  and  took  up  her  abode  there 
with  three  sisters  from  the  convent  During  the 
last  days  of  the  Terror,  the  mob  demolished  the 
chateau,  and  seized  the  nuns  and  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches,  who  were  cast  into  prison  on  a  charge  of 
having  received  emissaries  from  Pitt  and  Coburg. 
The  Ninth  Thermidor  set  them  free.  Felicite's 
aunt  died  of  fright.  Two  of  the  sisters  left  France; 
the  third  placed  the  little  Des  Touches  in  the  care  of 
her  nearest  relative,  Monsieur  de  Faucombe,  her 
maternal  great-uncle,  who  lived  at  Nantes;  she  then 
joined  her  companions  in  exile. 

Monsieur  de  Faucombe,  an  old  man  of  sixty,  had 
married  a  young  wife  to  whom  he  left  the  manage- 
ment of  his  affairs.  He  devoted  all  his  attention  to 
archaeology,  a  passion,  or,  to  speak  more  correctly, 
one  of  the  manias  "."hich  assist  old  men  to  imagine 
that  they  are  still  alive.  His  ward's  education  was 
left  entirely  to  chance.  Receiving  but  little  over- 
sight from  a  young  woman  devoted  to  the  pleasures 
of  the  imperial  regime,  Felicite  brought  herself  up 
like  a  boy.  She  kept  Monsieur  de  Faucombe  com- 
pany in  his  library  and  read  whatever  she  chose  to 
read.  She  acquired  a  theoretical  knowledge  of  life, 
therefore,  and  had  no  innocence  of  mind,  although 


BEATRIX  95 

she  remained  chaste.  Her  intelligence  floated  among 
the  impurities  of  knowledge,  and  her  heart  remained 
pure.  She  became  surprisingly  well-informed,  in- 
cited by  a  passion  for  reading  and  assisted  by  an 
excellent  memory.  Thus,  at  eighteen,  she  knew  as 
much  as  young  authors  of  to-day  are  likely  to  know 
before  beginning  to  write.  The  prodigious  amount 
of  reading  she  accomplished,  held  her  passions  in 
check  much  better  than  life  at  a  convent,  where  the 
imaginations  of  young  girls  are  inflamed.  The 
brain  stuffed  to  bursting  with  undigested,  unclassi- 
fied knowledge,  dominated  the  childish  heart  This 
depravity  of  the  intelligence,  entirely  without  effect 
upon  the  chastity  of  the  body,  would  have  astounded 
philosophers  or  observers,  if  anyone  at  Nantes  had 
suspected  Mademoiselle  des  Touches'  capacity. 
The  result  was  inversely  proportioned  to  the  cause; 
Felicite  had  no  inclination  toward  what  was  evil; 
she  imagined  everything  in  thought,  but  abstained 
from  deeds ;  she  enchanted  the  aged  Faucombe  and 
assisted  him  in  his  labors;  she  wrote  three  of  the 
excellent  old  gentleman's  works,  which  he  believed 
to  be  his  own,  for  his  mental  paternity  was  blind 
also. 

Such  hard  work,  disproportioned  to  the  develop- 
ment of  a  young  girl,  had  its  due  effect:  Felicite  fell 
sick,  her  blood  became  heated  and  she  seemed  to  be 
threatened  with  inflammation  of  the  lungs.  The 
doctors  prescribed  horseback  riding  and  social  dis- 
traction. Mademoiselle  des  Touches  became  a  very 
accomplished  horsewoman,  and  was  quite  well  again 


96  BEATRIX 

in  a  few  months.  At  eighteen,  she  appeared  in 
society,  where  she  produced  so  great  a  sensation 
that  at  Nantes  she  was  never  spoken  of  except  as 
the  lovely  Mademoiselle  des  Touches ;  but  she  was 
insensible  to  the  adoration  she  inspired;  she  had 
gone  thither  in  obedience  to  a  sentiment  imperish- 
able in  a  woman,  however  mentally  superior  she 
may  be. 

Wounded  by  her  aunt  and  her  cousins,  who  made 
sport  of  her  work  and  bantered  her  upon  her  repug- 
nance to  society,  assuming  that  she  had  not  the  art 
of  making  herself  agreeable,  she  determined  to  ap- 
pear in  the  guise  of  a  light-headed  flirt, — a  woman, 
in  a  word.  Felicite  anticipated  some  interchange 
of  ideas,  some  attraction  in  harmony  with  her  ex- 
alted intellect  and  with  the  extent  of  her  knowledge ; 
she  had  a  feeling  of  disgust  as  she  listened  to  the 
commonplaces  of  conversation,  the  idiotic  phrases 
of  gallantry,  and  was  especially  repelled  by  the 
military  aristocrats  to  whom  everybody  gave  way 
at  that  period.  Naturally,  she  had  neglected  orna- 
mental accomplishments.  When  she  saw  that  she 
was  inferior  to  the  dolls  who  played  the  piano  and 
made  themselves  entertaining  by  singing  roman:{aSy 
she  determined  to  be  a  musician :  she  withdrew  into 
complete  seclusion  and  began  to  study  persistently, 
under  the  direction  of  the  best  master  in  the  city. 
She  was  rich,  so  to  the  unbounded  amazement  of  the 
city  she  sent  for  Steibelt  to  give  her  the  finishing 
touches.  That  princely  extravagance  is  still  talked 
about  there.     The  master's  visit  to  Nantes  cost  her 


BEATRIX  97 

twelve  thousand  francs.  Eventually,  she  became  a 
consummate  musician.  Later,  at  Paris,  she  studied 
harmony  and  counterpoint,  and  composed  the  music 
of  two  operas,  which  had  the  greatest  success ;  but 
the  public  was  never  taken  into  her  confidence. 
Those  operas  are  supposed  to  have  been  produced 
by  Conti,  one  of  the  most  eminent  artists  of  our 
day;  but  this  episode  is  connected  with  her  heart 
story  and  will  be  explained  later. 

The  mediocrity  of  provincial  society  was  so 
wearisome  to  her,  her  mind  was  filled  with  such 
grand  ideas,  that  she  turned  her  back  upon  the 
salons  after  reappearing  for  a  moment  to  eclipse  all 
the  women  by  her  splendid  beauty,  to  enjoy  her 
triumph  over  the  amateur  musicians  and  to  compel 
the  adoration  of  the  people  of  intellect;  but,  after 
she  had  demonstrated  her  power  to  her  two  cousins 
and  driven  two  lovers  to  despair,  she  returned  to 
her  books,  her  piano,  the  works  of  Beethoven  and 
old  De  Faucombe. 

In  1812,  she  became  twenty-one  years  old  and  the 
archaeologist  settled  his  guardianship  account  with 
her ;  thus,  from  that  year,  she  assumed  the  manage- 
ment of  her  fortune,  consisting  of  fifteen  thousand 
francs  a  year  from  Les  Touches,  her  father's  prop- 
erty; of  twelve  thousand  a  year  then  yielded  by 
the  Faucombe  property,  which  would  be  increased 
one-third  on  the  renewal  of  the  leases ;  and  of  three 
hundred  thousand  francs  saved  by  her  guardian.  Of 
provincial  life,  Felicite  retained  nothing  but  a  clear 
understanding  of  the  word  fortune  and  that  tendency 
7 


98  BEATRIX 

to  administrative  shrewdness  which  perhaps  re- 
establishes the  equilibrium  disturbed  by  the  move- 
ment of  capital  toward  Paris.  She  took  her  three 
hundred  thousand  francs  from  the  house  with  whom 
the  archasologist  had  placed  them,  and  invested 
them  in  the  public  funds  atthe  time  of  the  disasters, 
consequent  upon  the  retreat  from  Moscow.  She 
received  thirty  thousand  francs  additional  income. 
After  all  her  expenses  were  paid,  she  had  fifty  thou- 
sand a  year  to  invest.  A  young  woman  of  such 
calibre  at  twenty-one  was  the  equal  of  a  man  of 
thirty.  Her  mind  had  expanded  enormously  and 
long-continued  habit  of  criticism  enabled  her  to  form 
a  sound  judgment  of  men,  art,  business  and  politics. 
She  then  determined  to  leave  Nantes,  but  her  former 
guardian,  De  Faucombe,  fell  sick  of  the  malady  that 
carried  him  off.  She  was  like  a  wife  to  the  old  man 
and  nursed  him  for  eighteen  months  with  the  devo- 
tion of  a  guardian  angel,  and  closed  his  eyes  as  Na- 
poleon was  struggling  with  Europe  over  the  body  of 
France.  She  thereupon  postponed  her  departure  for 
Paris  until  the  end  of  that  struggle.  Being  a  roy- 
alist, she  hurried  to  the  capital  to  be  present  at  the 
return  of  the  Bourbons.  She  was  received  there  by 
the  Grandlieus,  with  whom  she  had  ties  of  kinship; 
but  the  disasters  of  the  twentieth  of  March  occurred 
and  all  her  prospects  were  in  suspense.  She  was 
able  to  watch  close  at  hand  the  last  expiring  image 
of  the  Empire,  admire  the  Grand  Armee  which  as- 
sembled on  the  Champ  de  Mars,  as  in  an  amphithe- 
atre, to  salute  its  Cassar  before  going  to  its  death 


BEATRIX  99 

at  Waterloo.  Felicite's  noble,  exalted  imagination 
was  thrilled  by  that  magic  spectacle.  The  political 
commotion,  the  marvelous  transformations  of  that 
three  months'  tragedy  which  history  has  named  the 
Hundred  Days,  engrossed  her  thoughts  and  preserved 
her  from  all  passion  of  the  heart,  amid  an  upheaval 
which  dispersed  the  royalist  society  in  which  she 
had  made  her  first  appearance. 

The  Grandlieus  had  followed  the  Bourbons  to 
Ghent,  leaving  their  house  to  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches.  Felicite,  who  would  accept  no  subordi- 
nate position,  purchased  for  a  hundred  and  thirty 
thousand  francs  one  of  the  finest  mansions  on  Rue 
du  Mont-Blanc,  and  installed  herself  there  when 
the  Bourbons  returned  in  1815.  The  garden  alone 
is  worth  two  millions  to-day.  Being  accustomed  to 
manage  her  own  affairs,  Felicite  soon  familiarized 
herself  with  a  department  of  activity  which  seems 
exclusively  given  over  to  men. 

In  1 8 16,  she  was  twenty-five  years  old.  She  knew 
nothing  of  marriage,  but  had  simply  formed  her  own 
conception  of  it;  she  judged  it  according  to  its  causes 
instead  of  watching  its  effects,  and  saw  only  its 
drawbacks.  Her  superior  mind  revolted  at  the 
thought  of  the  abdication  with  which  a  married 
woman  begins  life;  she  had  an  exalted  idea  of  the 
value  of  independence  and  was  repelled  by  the 
thought  of  the  cares  of  maternity.  It  is  necessary 
to  give  these  details  in  order  to  justify  the  anomalies 
that  distinguish  Camille  Maupin  from  other  people. 
She  never  knew  her  father  or  mother,  and  was  her 


100  BEATRIX 

own  mistress  from  childhood ;  her  guardian  was  an  old 
arch^ologist,  chance  cast  her  lines  in  the  domain  of 
science  and  the  imagination,  in  the  literary  world, 
instead  of  confining  them  within  the  circle  marked 
out  by  the  useless  education  ordinarily  given  to 
women,  by  maternal  instruction  concerning  the 
toilet,  hypocritical  morality,  and  the  Amazonian  ac- 
complishments of  the  sex.  Long  before  she  became 
famous,  anyone  could  see  at  the  first  glance  that 
she  had  never  played  with  dolls. 

Toward  the  close  of  the  year  1817,  Felicite  des 
Touches  began  to  notice  in  her  personal  appear- 
ance traces,  not  of  decay,  but  of  fatigue.  She 
realized  that  her  beauty  was  destined  to  fade  as  a 
result  of  her  persistent  celibacy,  but  she  desired  to 
remain  beautiful,  for  at  that  time  she  relied  upon 
her  beauty.  Science  informed  her  of  nature's  decree 
conceraing  her  creations  which  perish  as  much  from 
misinterpretation  of  her  laws  as  from  their  abuse. 
Her  aunt's  wasted  features  came  to  her  mind  and 
made  her  shudder.  As  between  marriage  and  pas- 
sion she  determined  to  remain  free;  but  she  was  no 
longer  indifferent  to  the  homage  laid  at  her  feet. 

At  the  time  when  this  narrative  begins,  she  was 
almost  as  she  was  in  1817.  Eighteen  years  had 
passed  her  by  with  respect.  At  forty,  she  could 
safely  claim  to  be  only  twenty-five.  And  so  to 
describe  her  in  1836,  is  to  represent  her  as  she  was 
in  18 1 7.  Women  who  know  the  conditions  of  tem- 
perament and  beauty  which  enable  their  sex  to 
resist  the  ravages  of  time  will  understand  how  and 


BEATRIX  lOI 

why  Felicite  enjoyed  so  great  a  privilege,  by  study- 
ing a  portrait  for  which  the  most  brilliant  tones  of 
the  palette  and  the  richest  of  frames  are  reserved. 

Bretagne  presents  for  solution  a  curious  problem  in 
the  predominance  of  brown  hair,  brown  eyes  and 
dark  complexions  in  a  country  very  near  England, 
where  the  atmospheric  conditions  vary  so  little.  Is 
this  problem  connected  with  the  great  question  of 
the  races  ?  does  it  depend  upon  physical  differences 
thus  far  undiscovered  ?  Some  day,  perhaps,  scientific 
men  will  investigate  the  causes  of  this  peculiarity, 
which  ceases  in  the  adjoining  province,  in  Nor- 
mandie.  Until  solved,  this  curious  fact  confronts 
us;  blondes  are  very  rare  among  the  women  of 
Bretagne,  almost  all  of  whom  have  the  sparkling 
eyes  of  the  women  of  the  South;  but  instead  of  pre- 
senting the  tall  stature  and  serpentine  outlines  of 
Italy  or  Spain,  they  are  generally  small,  thickset, 
well-rounded,  stout,  except  among  the  upper  classes, 
which  cross  and  recross  through  their  aristocratic 
alliances. 

Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  like  a  true  Breton  of 
high  lineage,  is  of  medium  height;  she  is  not  five 
feet  tall,  but  she  is  universally  taken  to  be  more 
than  that.  The  error  is  due  to  her  figure,  which 
increases  her  apparent  height  She  has  the  com- 
plexion peculiar  to  beautiful  Italian  women,  olive 
brown  by  daylight  and  white  by  artificial  light;  you 
would  say  it  was  animated  ivory.  The  sunlight 
glides  over  her  flesh  as  over  a  polished  body  and 
makes  it  glisten;  some  violent  emotion  is  necessary 


102  BEATRIX 

to  summon  a  faint  flush  to  her  cheeks,  and  it  soon 
disappears.  This  peculiarity  imparts  to  her  face  the 
impassibility  of  the  savage.  The  face  is  long  rather 
than  oval,  and  resembles  that  of  one  of  the  lovely 
figures  of  Isis  on  the  bas-reliefs  found  in  ^gina. 
You  might  compare  her  head  in  purity  of  outline  to 
the  Sphinx's  heads,  polished  by  the  fire  of  the 
desert,  caressed  by  the  fierce  heat  of  the  Egyptian 
sun.  The  complexion  harmonizes  with  the  regular 
shape  of  the  head.  The  hair,  black  as  jet  and  very 
abundant,  falls  in  braids  along  her  neck  like  the 
headdress  with  two  fillets,  of  the  statues  at  Mem- 
phis, and  corresponds  admirably  with  the  generally 
severe  character  of  the  figure.  The  brow  is  full  and 
broad,  bulging  at  the  temples,  relieved  by  flat  sur- 
faces upon  which  the  light  rests,  and  somewhat 
harsh  of  outline,  like  that  of  the  huntress  Diana:  a 
powerful,  self-willed,  but  silent  and  tranquil  brow. 
The  arch  of  the  eyebrows,  strongly  marked,  extends 
above  eyes  which  gleam  at  times  like  fixed  stars. 
The  white  of  the  eye  is  neither  of  a  bluish  tinge  nor 
marked  with  red  veins,  nor  of  pure  white;  it  has 
the  consistency  of  the  cornea,  but  is  of  a  warmer 
tone.  The  pupil  is  surrounded  by  an  orange  circle. 
It  is  bronze  surrounded  with  gold,  but  both  gold  and 
bronze  are  animate.  The  pupil  has  great  depth. 
It  is  not  lined,  as  in  some  eyes,  with  a  sort  of  foil 
that  reflects  the  light,  and  makes  them  resemble  a 
cat's  eyes  or  a  tiger's ;  it  has  not  that  terrible  in- 
flexibility that  makes  sensitive  people  shudder;  but 
its  depths  are  infinite,  just  as  the  splendor  of  eyes  seen 


BEATRIX  103 

in  a  mirror  is  circumscribed.  The  observer's  glance 
may  lose  itself  in  that  mind,  which  concentrates  its 
forces  and  withdraws  from  sight  as  swiftly  as  it 
gushes  forth  from  those  velvety  eyes.  In  a  moment 
of  passion,  Camille  Maupin's  eye  is  sublime;  the 
golden  blaze  other  glance  lights  up  the  yellow  white 
of  the  eye,  and  the  whole  organ  flashes  fire;  but,  in 
repose,  it  is  dull  and  lustreless,  and  the  torpor  of 
meditation  often  imparts  to  it  an  appearance  of 
idiocy;  when  the  light  dies  out  in  the  eye,  the  lines 
of  the  face  become  proportionately  joyless.  The 
lashes  are  short,  but  as  thick  and  black  as  the 
ermine's  tail.  The  lids  are  dark  and  streaked  with 
red  filaments,  which  give  them  charm  and  strength 
at  once — two  qualities  seldom  found  in  the  same 
woman.  Below  the  eyes  there  is  not  the  slightest 
trace  of  crow's  foot  or  wrinkle.  There,  again,  you 
find  the  granite  of  the  Egyptian  statue  softened 
by  time.  But  the  prominence  of  the  cheek  bones, 
although  not  obtrusive,  is  more  pronounced  than  in 
other  women  and  completes  the  general  impression 
of  strength  of  character  suggested  by  the  figure. 
The  nose,  which  is  short  and  thin,  is  pierced  with 
nostrils  passionately  dilated  to  a  sufficient  ex-tent  to 
allow  a  glimpse  of  the  delicate  pink  flush  of  their 
lining.  The  nose  is  a  fitting  continuation  of  the 
forehead,  to  which  it  is  joined  by  a  most  graceful 
line;  it  is  perfectly  white  at  its  beginning  as  at  its 
end,  and  its  end  is  endowed  with  a  sort  of  mobility 
which  performs  marvels  of  expression  at  times 
when  Camille  loses  her  temper,  flies  into  a  passion 


104  BEATRIX 

or  rises  in  revolt.  At  that  point  above  all  others, 
as  Talma  has  observed,  the  wrath  or  irony  of  great 
minds  is  displayed.  Immobility  of  the  nostrils  de- 
notes a  sort  of  insensibility.  The  nose  of  a  miser 
never  throbs;  it  is  always  drawn  in  like  his  mouth; 
everything  is  tightly  closed  in  his  face  as  in  him- 
self. The  mouth,  arched  at  the  corners,  is  of  a 
brilliant  red;  the  blood  abounds  therein,  and  fur- 
nishes the  living,  thinking  dye  that  imparts  so 
much  charm  to  that  mouth  and  may  reassure  the 
lover  dismayed  by  the  majestic  gravity  of  the  face. 
The  upper  lip  is  thin,  the  furrow  that  connects  it 
with  the  nose  descends  quite  low  as  in  a  bow,  giv- 
ing a  peculiar  emphasis  to  her  disdain.  Camille 
has  little  to  do  in  order  to  give  expression  to  her 
wrath.  That  attractive  lip  is  bordered  by  the  broad 
red  line  of  the  lower  lip,  which  tells  of  great  kind- 
ness of  heart  and  is  running  over  with  love,  and 
which  Phidias  seems  to  have  placed  there  like  the 
edge  of  an  open  pomegranate,  whose  coloring  it  has. 
The  turned-up  chin  is  a  little  fat,  but  projects  in  a 
way  that  expresses  determination,  and  fittingly 
completes  this  royal,  if  not  divine,  profile.  We  must 
not  forget  to  say  that  there  is  a  faint  line  of  down 
immediately  below  the  nose.  Nature  would  have 
gone  astray  had  she  failed  to  place  that  soft  haze 
there.  The  ear  has  delicate,  scroll-like  curves,  a 
token  of  many  hidden  charms.  The  bust  is  ample. 
The  waist  is  slender  and  shapely.  The  hips  are 
not  prominent,  but  they  are  graceful.  The  fall  of  the 
loins  is  superb,  and  reminds  one  more  of  Bacchus 


BEATRIX  105 

than  of  the  yenus  Callipygos.  That  is  the  dividing 
line  that  separates  almost  all  illustrious  women 
from  the  rest  of  their  sex;  they  bear  a  vague  re- 
semblance to  man  in  that  particular,  they  have 
neither  the  elasticity  nor  the  ease  of  movement  of 
the  woman  nature  has  destined  for  maternity; 
their  gait  is  less  graceful.  This  observation  is  two- 
sided,  so  to  speak;  it  may  be  duplicated  in  regard 
to  those  shrewdy  astute,  false,  cowardly  men,  whose 
hips  are  almost  like  women's.  Instead  of  being 
hollowed  out  at  the  nape,  Camille's  neck  presents 
a  swelling  outline  which  connects  the  shoulders 
with  the  head,  without  undulations — the  most  con- 
vincing evidence  of  strength  of  character.  From 
time  to  time,  the  neck  displays  athletically  mag- 
nificent folds.  The  superbly-shaped  shoulders  seem 
to  belong  to  a  woman  of  colossal  size.  The  arms 
are  built  upon  a  powerful  model,  ending  in  wrists 
as  slender  as  an  Englishwoman's,  and  small,  plump, 
dimpled  hands,  embellished  with  almond-shaped 
pink  nails  filed  at  the  edges,  and  of  a  whiteness 
indicating  that  the  plump,  solid,  well-proportioned 
body  is  of  a  very  different  tone  from  the  face. 

The  determined,  repellent  carriage  of  the  head  is 
modified  by  the  mobility  of  the  lips  and  their  chang- 
ing expression,  and  by  the  artistic  play  of  the 
nostrils.  But  despite  these  seductive  promises, 
carefully  concealed  from  the  profane,  there  is  some- 
thing provoking  in  the  tranquil  expression  of  the 
face.  Melancholy  and  grave  rather  than  gracious, 
it  wears  the  dejected  expression  due  to  constant 


I06  BEATRIX 

meditation.  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  listens  more 
than  she  talks.  She  terrifies  by  her  silence  and  by 
her  deeply  penetrating  glance.  No  one,  among 
really  educated  persons,  has  ever  seen  her  without 
thinking  of  the  original  Cleopatra,  the  little  brunette 
who  almost  changed  the  face  of  the  world;  but,  in 
Camille,  the  animal  is  so  complete,  so  well  put  to- 
gether, and  of  such  a  leonine  nature,  that  any  man, 
however  much  of  a  Turk  he  may  be,  regrets  that 
such  a  mind  is  placed  in  such  a  body,  and  would 
like  her  to  be  all  woman. 

Everyone  trembles  when  he  is  confronted  by  the 
monstrous  corruption  of  a  diabolic  mind.  Do  not 
cold  analysis  and  positiveness  of  ideas  enlighten  the 
passions  in  such  an  one?  Does  not  tliis  woman 
judge  instead  of  feeling,  or, — a  still  more  terrible 
phenomenon, — does  she  not  judge  and  feel  at  the 
same  time.?  Able  to  do  anything  with  her  brain,  is 
she  likely  to  stop  where  other  women  stop?  Does 
her  intellectual  power  leave  her  heart  weak  ?  Has 
she  the  power  of  fascination  ?  Does  she  descend  to 
the  touching  nothings  with  which  women  attract, 
amuse  and  interest  the  men  they  love  ?  Does  she 
not  cast  aside  a  sentiment  when  it  does  not  answer 
the  requirements  of  the  infinite  ideas  upon  which 
she  caresses  and  feasts  her  eyes?  Who  can  fill 
the  abysses  of  her  eyes  ?  You  have  a  vague  fear  of 
finding  in  her  some  unsubdued  virgin  force.  The 
strong  woman  should  be  only  a  symbol,  she  in- 
spires terror  when  seen  in  flesh  and  blood. 

Camille  Maupin  is,  in  some  slight  degree,  a  living 


BEATRIX  107 

copy  of  Schiller's  Isis,  who  was  concealed  within 
the  temple,  and  at  whose  feet  the  priests  found 
dying  the  bold  athletes  who  had  consulted  her. 
The  adventures  which  were  looked  upon  by  society 
as  authentic,  and  which  Camille  did  not  disavow, 
confirm  the  questions  suggested  by  her  appearance. 
But  may  it  not  be  that  she  loves  calumny  ?  The 
character  of  her  beauty  has  not  been  without  influ- 
ence upon  her  reputation :  it  has  been  of  service  to 
her,  just  as  her  fortune  and  her  rank  have  enabled 
her  to  maintain  a  position  in  the  forefront  of  society. 
When  a  sculptor  desires  to  produce  a  perfect  statue 
of  Bretagne,  he  can  do  no  better  than  to  copy  Ma- 
demoiselle des  Touches.  Such  a  full-blooded,  pas- 
sionate temperament  as  hers  is  the  only  one  that 
can  resist  the  action  of  time.  The  constant  nourish- 
ment of  the  flesh  beneath  that  varnished  skin  is  the 
only  weapon  Nature  has  given  women  with  which 
to  drive  away  wrinkles,  which,  however,  Camille's 
impassibility  of  feature  would  also  tend  to  prevent 
In  1817,  this  charming  young  woman  opened  her 
salon  to  the  artists,  famous  authors,  scholars  and 
publicists  toward  whom  her  instincts  attracted  her. 
She  kept  a  salon  like  Baron  Gerard's,  where  the 
aristocracy  mingled  with  illustrious  men  of  every 
degree,  and  where  the  elite  of  Parisian  womankind 
was  to  be  found.  Mademoiselle  des  Touches'  con- 
nections and  her  fortune,  increased  by  the  property 
bequeathed  to  her  by  her  aunt,  the  nun,  assisted  in 
the  undertaking,  so  difficult  at  Paris,  of  creating  a 
social  circle  for  herself.     Her  independence  was  one 


I08  BEATRIX 

of  the  reasons  of  her  success.  Many  ambitious 
mothers  conceived  the  hope  of  marrying  their  sons 
to  her — sons  whose  fortune  was  not  in  perfect  accord 
with  the  splendor  of  their  escutcheons.  Some  peers 
of  France,  allured  by  an  income  of  eighty  thousand 
francs  and  seduced  by  the  magnificence  of  her  es- 
tablishment, brought  their  most  crabbed  and  most 
exacting  female  relatives  thither.  The  diplomatic 
world,  which  seeks  mental  entertainment,  went 
there  and  enjoyed  itself. 

Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  surrounded  by  so 
many  interests,  was  enabled  thus  to  study  the 
various  comedies  that  passion,  avarice  and  ambition 
lead  even  the  most  high-minded  men  to  play.  She 
learned  early  in  life  to  see  the  world  as  it  is,  and 
was  fortunate  enough  not  to  fall  a  victim  at  once  to 
the  engrossing  love  that  absorbs  a  woman's  mind 
and  faculties,  and  thereupon  prevents  her  from 
judging  sanely.  Ordinarily  a  woman  feels,  enjoys 
and  judges  successively;  thence,  her  life  is  divided 
into  three  distinct  periods,  the  last  of  which  co- 
incides with  the  melancholy  epoch  of  old  age.  In 
the  case  of  Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  this  order  was 
reversed.  Her  youth  was  enveloped  in  the  clouds 
of  science  and  the  cold  mists  of  reflection.  This 
transposition  helps  to  explain  the  extraordinary 
character  of  her  existence  and  the  nature  of  her 
talent.  She  was  observing  men  at  an  age  when 
most  women  have  eyes  for  but  one  man,  she 
despised  what  they  admire,  she  detected  falsehood 
in  the  flatteries  they  accept  as  truths,  she  laughed 


BEATRIX  109 

at  the  things  that  make  them  grave.  This  inver- 
sion of  the  natural  order  of  things  lasted  a  long 
while,  but  it  had  a  terrible  ending :  she  was  destined 
to  find  her  first  love  in  her  heart,  young  and  fresh, 
at  a  time  when  women  are  called  upon  by  nature 
to  renounce  love. 

Her  first  liaison  was  so  secret  that  no  one  knew 
of  it  Felicite,  like  all  women  when  they  yield  to 
the  impulses  of  the  heart,  was  led  to  expect  charm 
of  mind  as  a  result  of  charm  of  body;  she  fell  in 
love  with  a  face,  and  learned  by  experience  the 
idiocy  of  a  libertine  who  saw  nothing  but  the  wo- 
man in  her.  She  was  some  time  recovering  from 
her  disgust  and  from  that  insane  connection. 

A  man  divined  her  suffering  and  consoled  her 
without  ulterior  motives,  or  at  least  was  able  to 
conceal  his  projects.  Felicite  thought  she  had  found 
the  nobility  of  heart  and  mind  that  the  dandy 
lacked.  The  man  in  question  possessed  one  of  the 
most  original  minds  of  the  time.  He  himself  wrote 
under  a  pseudonym  and  his  first  writings  proclaimed 
him  a  worshiper  of  Italy.  Felicite  must  travel  or 
run  the  risk  of  perpetuating  her  ignorance  of  the 
only  subject  on  which  she  was  uninformed.  This 
sceptical,  irreverent  man  took  her  with  him  to  make 
acquaintance  with  the  fatherland  of  the  arts.  The 
celebrated  unknown  may  well  be  considered  the 
master  and  the  creator  of  Camille  Maupin.  He  ar- 
ranged her  vast  stores  of  knowledge,  added  to  them 
by  the  study  of  the  masterpieces  with  which  Italy 
abounds,  gave  her  the  ingenious,  delicate,  profound 


1 10  BEATRIX 

epigrammatic  tone  peculiarly  characteristic  of  his 
own  talent  which  is  always  a  little  odd  in  form,  but 
which  Camille  Maupin  modified  by  the  delicacy  of 
sentiment  and  happy  turn  of  phrase  natural  to 
women ;  he  inculcated  in  her  a  taste  for  the  great 
works  in  English  and  German  literature  and  taught 
her  those  two  languages  during  their  travels. 

At  Rome,  in  1820,  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  was 
deserted  for  an  Italian  woman.  Except  for  that 
calamity,  perhaps  she  never  would  have  become 
famous.  Napoleon  dubbed  Misfortune  the  midwife 
of  Genius.  That  occurrence  inspired  in  Mademoi- 
selle des  Touches'  mind  forever  that  contempt  for 
humanity  which  makes  her  so  strong.  Felicite  died 
and  Camille  was  born.  She  returned  to  Paris  with 
Conti,  the  great  musician,  for  whom  she  wrote 
the  librettos  for  two  operas;  but  she  was  dead  to 
illusions  and  became,  unknown  to  society,  a  sort  of 
female  Don  Juan,  without  debts  or  conquests.  En- 
couraged by  success,  she  published  her  two  volumes 
of  plays,  which,  at  one  stroke,  placed  Camille 
Maupin  among  the  illustrious  anonymous  authors. 
She  told  the  tale  of  her  betrayed  passion  in  an  ad- 
mirable little  romance,  one  of  the  chefs-d'oeuvre  of 
the  time.  This  book,  dangerous  as  an  exemplar, 
was  placed  beside  Adolphe,  a  horrible  lamentation, 
whose  very  antipodes  is  found  in  Camille's  work. 
The  delicacy  of  her  literary  metamorphosis  was  not 
as  yet  understood.  Some  fine  minds  alone  detected 
therein  that  generosity  which  delivers  a  man  to 
the  critics  and  rescues  a  woman  from  renown  by 


BEATRIX  III 

permitting  her  to  remain  obscure.  Notwithstanding 
her  wishes,  her  celebrity  increased  day  by  day,  as 
much  through  the  influence  of  her  salon  as  by  her 
repartees,  the  justice  of  her  judgments  and  the 
solidity  of  her  knowledge.  She  became  an  author- 
ity, her  good  things  were  repeated,  she  could  not 
shirk  the  functions  with  which  she  was  invested  by 
Parisian  society.  She  became  an  acknowledged  ex- 
ception. Society  bowed  before  the  talent  and  the 
fortune  of  this  extraordinary  creature;  it  recognized 
and  gave  its  sanction  to  her  independence,  the 
women  admired  her  wit  and  the  men,  her  beauty. 
Moreover,  her  conduct  conformed  to  all  the  social 
conveniences.  Her  friendships  seemed  to  be  purely 
Platonic.  There  was  nothing  of  the  female  author 
about  her.  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  was  charm- 
ing as  a  society  woman,  as  occasion  required,  soft- 
voiced,  indolent,  coquettish,  careful  about  her  toilet, 
enchanted  with  the  follies  that  fascinate  women  and 
poets.  She  understood  perfectly  that  after  Madame 
de  Stael,  there  was  no  place  in  this  age  for  a  Sappho, 
and  Ninon  could  not  exist  in  Paris  without  great 
noblemen  and  a  licentious  court.  She  is  the  Ninon 
of  the  intellect,  she  adores  art  and  artists,  she  runs 
from  the  poet  to  the  musician,  from  the  sculptor  to 
the  prose  writer.  She  is  noble-hearted  and  gen- 
erous to  the  point  of  credulity,  she  is  so  full  of  pity 
for  misfortune,  so  full  of  disdain  for  fortunate  folk. 

She  has  lived  since  1830  in  a  select  circle  of 
proved  friends,  who  love  one  another  dearly  and 
esteem  one  another.     As  far  removed  from  the  noisy 


112  BEATRIX 

career  of  Madame  de  Stael  as  from  political  strife, 
she  makes  great  sport  of  Camille  Maupin,  that 
younger  brother  of  George  Sand,  whom  she  calls 
her  brother  Cain,  for  that  more  recent  renown  has 
quite  eclipsed  her  own.  Mademoiselle  des  Touches 
admires  her  fortunate  rival  with  angelic  good  humor, 
with  no  feeling  of  jealousy  and  without  reserve. 

Down  to  the  moment  that  this  narrative  begins, 
she  had  the  happiest  existence  that  a  woman  strong 
enough  to  look  after  herself,  can  imagine.  Between 
1817  and  1834,  she  came  to  Les  Touches  five  or  six 
times.  Her  first  sojourn  there  was  after  her  first 
disillusionment,  in  1818.  Her  house  at  Les  Touches 
was  uninhabitable;  she  sent  her  man  of  affairs  to 
Guerande  and  occupied  his  quarters  at  Les  Touches. 
She  had  no  suspicion  then  of  her  glory  to  come,  she 
was  depressed,  she  saw  no  one,  she  wished  in  some 
sort  to  search  her  own  heart  after  that  great  catas- 
trophe. She  wrote  to  one  of  her  female  friends 
at  Paris  concerning  her  intentions,  and  respect- 
ing the  necessary  furniture  to  put  Les  Touches  in 
order.  The  furniture  came  by  water  to  Nantes, 
was  carried  thence  to  Le  Croisic  in  a  small  boat, 
and  thence,  not  without  difficulty,  across  the  sands 
to  Les  Touches.  She  sent  for  workmen  from  Paris 
and  took  up  her  abode  at  Les  Touches,  which,  as  a 
whole,  seemed  to  please  her  immensely.  She  de- 
sired to  be  able  to  meditate  there  upon  the  events  of 
life,  as  if  she  were  in  a  private  monastery. 

At  the  beginning  of  winter  she  returned  to 
Paris.     Thereupon  the  little  town  of  Guerande  was 


BEATRIX  113 

convulsed  with  diabolic  curiosity;  nothing  was 
talked  about  there  but  Mademoiselle  des  Touches' 
Asiatic  magnificence.  The  notary,  her  man  of  busi- 
ness, issued  permits  to  inspect  Les  Touches.  People 
came  from  the  village  of  Batz,  from  Le  Croisic,  from 
Savenay.  This  curiosity  yielded  to  the  families  of 
the  concierge  and  the  gardener,  in  two  years,  the 
enormous  sum  of  seventeen  francs. 

Mademoiselle  did  not  return  to  Les  Touches  until 
two  years  later,  on  her  return  from  Italy ;  she  came 
by  way  of  Le  Croisic.  For  some  time,  nobody 
knew  her  at  Guerande,  which  she  visited  with 
Conti  the  composer.  Her  successive  appearances 
in  the  neighborhood  aroused  but  little  interest  in  the 
town  of  Guerande.  Certainly  no  one  besides  her 
manager  and  the  notary  was  in  the  secret  of  Camille 
Maupin's  renown.  At  this  time,  however,  the  con- 
tagion of  the  new  ideas  had  made  some  progress  in 
Guerande,  and  several  persons  there  knew  of  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches'  double  existence.  The  post- 
master received  letters  addressed  to  Camille  Maupin 
at  Les  Touches.     In  a  word,  the  veil  was  torn  away. 

In  a  country  essentially  Catholic,  behind  the 
times,  full  of  prejudices,  the  strange  life  led  by  this 
illustrious  woman  was  certain  to  give  rise  to  such 
rumors  as  had  alarmed  Abbe  Grimont,  because  it 
could  never  be  understood ;  therefore  it  seemed  a 
monstrous  thing  to  everybody.  Felicite  was  not 
alone  at  Les  Touches,  she  had  a  guest  That  guest 
was  Claude  Vignon,  the  arrogant,  disdainful  writer, 
who,  although  he  writes  nothing  but  criticisms,  has 
8 


1 14  BEATRIX 

found  means  of  impressing  the  public  and  literature 
with  a  general  idea  of  his  superiority.  Felicite, 
who,  for  seven  years,  had  received  him  as  she  had 
received  a  hundred  others,  authors,  journalists, 
artists  and  men  of  the  world, — who  knew  his  aim- 
less character,  his  indolence,  his  utter  destitution, 
his  recklessness  and  his  disgust  with  everything, 
seemed  disposed  to  make  him  her  husband  to  judge 
from  the  manner  in  which  she  bore  herself  toward 
him.  She  explained  her  conduct,  which  was  incom- 
prehensible to  her  friends,  by  attributing  it  to  am- 
bition, to  her  terror  at  the  thought  of  old  age ;  she 
desired  to  entrust  the  remainder  other  life  to  a  man 
of  superior  mould  for  whom  her  fortune  would  be  a 
stepping-stone,  and  who  would  keep  alive  her  im- 
portance in  the  literary  world.  She  had  therefore 
brought  Claude  Vignon  from  Paris  to  Les  Touches, 
as  an  eagle  carries  off  a  kid  in  its  claws,  to  study 
him  and  to  take  some  decided  measures;  but  she 
was  deceiving  Calyste  and  Claude  at  the  same  time ; 
she  had  no  thought  of  marriage,  she  was  a  prey  to 
the  most  violent  convulsions  that  can  agitate  a  mind 
as  strong  as  hers,  upon  finding  herself  the  dupe  of 
her  own  intellect  and  her  life  illuminated  too  late  by 
the  sun  of  love,  shining  as  it  shines  in  the  heart  of 
a  girl  of  twenty. 

Let  us  cast  a  glance  now  at  Camille's  cloister. 

Some  few  hundred  yards  from  Guerande, the  solid 
ground  of  Bretagne  comes  to  an  end  and  the  salt 
marshes  and  sand  dunes  begin.  You  go  down  into 
the  desert  of  sand  which  the  sea  has  left  like  a  belt 


BEATRIX  115 

between  it  and  the  land,  over  a  rough,  washed-out 
road  that  has  never  seen  a  carriage.  This  desert 
comprises  barren  sand,  ponds  of  irregular  shape, 
bordered  by  marshy  hummocks  where  the  salt  is 
gathered,  and  the  little  arm  of  the  sea  that  separates 
the  island  of  Le  Croisic  from  the  continent.  As  Le 
Croisic,  although  geographically  a  peninsula,  is 
connected  with  Bretagne  only  by  the  beach  that 
unites  it  with  the  village  of  Batz — barren,  shifting 
sands  that  are  very  hard  to  cross — it  may  be  con- 
sidered an  island. 

At  the  spot  where  the  road  from  Le  Croisic  to 
Guerande  joins  the  upland  road,  stands  a  country 
house  surrounded  by  an  extensive  garden,  remark- 
able for  its  gnarled  and  distorted  pine  trees,  some 
shaped  like  umbrellas,  others  almost  stripped  of 
their  branches,  and  all  displaying  their  reddish 
trunks  in  places  where  the  bark  has  been  torn  off. 
These  trees,  victims  of  the  tempest,  have  grown 
there  despite  the  wind  and  sea,  and  may  justly  be 
said  to  prepare  the  mind  for  the  melancholy  and 
curious  spectacle  of  the  salt  marshes  and  the  dunes, 
which  resemble  a  curdled  sea.  The  house,  well 
built  of  schistose  stone  set  in  mortar,  and  supported 
by  granite  quoins,  is  without  any  pretensions  to 
architecture;  it  presents  to  the  eye  a  bare  wall, 
pierced  at  regular  intervals  by  the  window  open- 
ings. The  windows  have  large  panes  on  the  first 
floor  and  small  squares  on  the  ground  floor.  Above 
the  first  floor  are  attics  below  an  enormous, 
high,  pointed  roof  with  two  gables,  and  with  two 


Il6  BEATRIX 

round  windows  on  each  face.  In  each  triangular 
gable  end,  a  window  opens  its  Cyclopean  eye,  to 
the  west  upon  the  sea,  to  the  east  upon  Guerande. 

One  facade  of  the  house  overlooks  the  Guerande 
road  and  the  other,  the  desert  with  Le  Croisic  at  the 
further  end.  Beyond  that  little  town  stretches  the 
open  sea.  A  brook  steals  through  an  opening  in  the 
park  wall,  which  the  Le  Croisic  road  skirts,  crosses 
the  road  and  loses  itself  among  the  sand  wastes  or 
in  the  little  salt  lake  surrounded  by  the  dunes  and 
swamps,  and  produced  by  the  irruption  of  the  arm 
of  the  sea.  A  road  some  few  fathoms  in  length, 
built  over  this  broken  ground,  leads  from  the  high- 
way to  the  house.  You  enter  through  a  great  gate. 
The  courtyard  is  surrounded  by  unpretentious  rural 
outbuildings — a  stable,  a  carriage-house,  a  house 
for  the  gardener,  with  a  barnyard  and  its  appur- 
tenances close  by,  more  for  the  use  of  the  concierge 
than  of  the  proprietor. 

The  grayish  tones  of  the  main  building  harmon- 
ize admirably  with  the  landscape  it  overlooks.  Its 
park  is  the  oasis  in  this  desert,  on  the  outskirts  of 
which  the  traveler  finds  a  hut  built  of  mud  where 
the  customs  officers  keep  guard.  This  house  with- 
out land,  or  whose  land  is  located  on  the  territory 
of  Guerande,  derives  an  income  of  ten  thousand 
francs  from  the  marshes,  and  the  residue  from  farms 
scattered  about  on  the  upland. 

Such  is  the  fief  of  Les  Touches,  which  the  Revolu- 
tion deprived  of  its  feudal  revenues.  To-day,  Les 
Touches  is  a  rural  estate  simply,  but  the  paludiers 


BEATRIX  117 

continue  to  say  the  chateau;  they  would  say  the 
seigneur  if  the  fief  had  not  fallen  to  a  woman. 
When  Felicite  determined  to  restore  Les  Touches, 
she  was  very  careful,  like  the  great  artist  she  is,  to 
change  nothing  in  the  desolate  exterior  which  gives 
that  solitary  structure  the  appearance  of  a  prison. 
The  entrance  gate  only  was  embellished  by  the 
addition  of  two  brick  columns  supporting  a  gallery 
beneath  which  a  carriage  can  pass.  The  courtyard 
was  paved. 

The  arrangement  of  the  ground  floor  corresponds 
with  that  of  the  majority  of  country  houses  built  a 
hundred  years  ago.  Evidently,  the  house  was  con- 
structed on  the  ruins  of  some  little  castle,  which  was 
perched  there  like  a  ring  connecting  Le  Croisic  and 
the  village  of  Batz  with  Guerande,  and  exercised 
lordship  over  the  marshes.  A  peristyle  had  been 
constructed  at  the  foot  of  the  staircase.  First  comes 
a  large  reception  room  with  a  wooden  floor,  in  which 
Felicite  placed  a  billiard  table;  then  an  immense 
salon  with  six  windows,  two  of  which,  in  the  gable 
end,  form  doors  leading  down  into  the  garden  by 
some  ten  or  more  steps,  and  correspond,  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  the  salon,  to  the  doors  leading  to  the 
billiard-room  and  the  dining-room  respectively. 
The  kitchen  is  at  the  other  end,  connected  with  the 
dining-room  by  a  butler's  pantry.  The  stairway 
separates  the  billiard-room  from  the  kitchen,  which 
had  a  door  into  the  peristyle;  but  Mademoiselle  at 
once  closed  it  up  and  opened  another  door  into  the 
courtyard. 


Il8  BEATRIX 

The  height  of  the  rooms  on  this  floor  and  tlieir 
great  size  made  it  possible  for  Camille  to  display  a 
noble  simplicity  in  their  treatment.  She  was  care- 
ful not  to  fill  them  with  valuable  objects.  The 
salon,  which  is  painted  gray  throughout,  is  furnished 
in  old  mahogany  and  green  silk,  white  dimity  cur- 
tains with  green  borders  at  the  windows,  two  con- 
soles and  a  round  table ;  in  the  centre  is  a  carpet 
with  a  large  square  pattern;  upon  the  huge  mantel- 
piece with  its  enormous  mirror  is  a  clock  represent- 
ing the  chariot  of  the  sun,  between  two  candelabra  of 
the  style  in  vogue  under  the  Empire.  The  billiard- 
room  has  gray  dimity  curtains  with  green  borders, 
and  two  divans.  The  furniture  of  the  dining-room 
consists  of  four  great  mahogany  dressers,  a  table, 
twelve  mahogany  chairs  upholstered  in  horsehair 
cloth,  and  magnificent  engravings  by  Audran  in 
mahogany  frames.  From  the  centre  of  the  ceiling 
hangs  a  graceful  lantern,  such  as  is  seen  in  the 
halls  of  great  hotels,  containing  two  lamps.  All  the 
ceilings  have  projecting  beams  and  are  painted  to 
represent  the  natural  wood.  The  old  staircase, 
which  is  of  wood  with  heavy  balusters,  has  a  green 
carpet  from  top  to  bottom. 

The  first  floor  consists  of  two  suites  of  apartments, 
separated  by  the  stairway.  Camille  took  for  herself 
the  one  that  looks  upon  the  sea  and  marshes  and 
dunes,  and  arranged  the  rooms  thus :  a  small  salon, 
a  large  bedroom,  and  two  small  rooms,  one  for  a 
dressing-room  and  the  other  for  a  study.  In  the 
other  part  of  the  house  on  that  floor  she  arranged 


BEATRIX  119 

two  apartments,  each  having  a  dressing-room  and  a 
reception-room.  The  servants'  quarters  are  in  the 
attics. 

The  two  guest  rooms  were  furnished  at  first  with 
such  things  only  as  were  absolutely  necessary. 
The  artistic  and  luxurious  furnishings  she  had 
ordered  from  Paris  were  reserved  for  her  own  apart- 
ment. She  desired  to  have  the  most  fanciful  crea- 
tions of  art  before  her  eyes  in  that  gloomy,  depress- 
ing abode,  in  the  midst  of  that  gloomy,  depressing 
region.  Her  little  salon  is  hung  with  the  loveliest  of 
Gobelin  tapestries,  set  in  the  most  marvelous  of 
carved  frames.  At  the  windows  hang  the  richest  of 
old-fashioned  stuffs,  magnificent  brocade  of  changing 
color,  gold  and  red,  yellow  and  green,  falling  in 
numberless  stately  folds,  adorned  with  regal  fringes 
and  tassels  befitting  the  most  splendid  church  can- 
opies. The  salon  is  furnished  with  a  chest  that  her 
man  of  business  found  for  her,  worth  to-day  seven 
or  eight  thousand  francs,  with  a  table  of  carved 
ebony,  a  Venetian  secretary  with  innumerable 
drawers,  inlaid  with  ivory  arabesques,  and  with  the 
noblest  examples  of  gothic  furniture.  There  are 
pictures  and  statuettes,  the  choicest  that  one  of  her 
friends,  a  painter,  could  pick  up  among  the  dealers 
in  curios,  who  had  no  idea,  in  1818,  of  the  value 
those  treasures  would  acquire  at  a  later  date.  Upon 
the  tables  are  fine  Japanese  vases  of  curious  design. 
The  carpet  is  Persian,  smuggled  into  France  by  way 
of  the  dunes. 

Her  bedroom  is  furnished  in  Louis  Quinze  style, 


120  BEATRIX 

with  flawless  accuracy.  There  is  the  bedstead  of 
carved  wood  painted  white,  with  arched  head  and 
foot  boards,  surmounted  by  Loves  tossing  flowers, 
stuffed  and  covered  with  figured  silk,  the  ceiling  of 
the  canopy  embellished  with  four  bunches  of 
feathers;  the  hangings  of  genuine  Persian  stuff, 
caught  back  with  silk  loops,  cords,  and  knots ;  the 
chimney  ornaments  in  rockwork;  an  ormolu  clock 
between  two  large  vases  of  the  first  Sevres  blue,  set 
in  gilded  copper;  the  mirror  set  in  a  frame  of  the 
same  style ;  Pompadour  dressing-table  with  its  lace 
and  its  mirror;  many  articles  of  furniture  of  curious 
shape — the  duchesses,  the  long,  reclining  chairs, 
the  small,  hard  couches,  the  low  easy-chairs  with 
stuffed  backs,  the  lacquered  screens,  the  curtains  of 
silk  like  that  upon  the  furniture,  lined  with  pink 
satin  and  draped  with  heavy  cords ;  the  carpet  from 
La  Savonnerie;  in  a  word,  all  the  rich,  elegant, 
sumptuous,  dainty  objects,  amid  which  the  women 
of  the  eighteenth  century  made  love. 

The  study,  entirely  modern,  in  contrast  with  the 
gewgaws  of  the  time  of  Louis  Quinze,  has  beauti- 
ful mahogany  furniture;  the  bookshelves  are  well 
filled ;  it  has  a  comfortable  couch  and  resembles  a 
boudoir.  The  charming  trifles  that  betray  a 
woman's  presence  lie  around  on  all  sides  and  fill  the 
mind  with  modern  things:  journals,  handkerchief 
and  glove  boxes,  porcelain  lamp  shades,  statuettes, 
vases,  writing  desks,  an  album  or  two,  paper- 
weights and  all  the  countless  fashionable  trinkets. 
Sight-seers  view   with    anxious    surprise    several 


BEATRIX  121 

pistols,  an  Oriental  pipe,  a  hunting  crop,  a  ham- 
mock, a  rifle,  a  blouse,  tobacco,  and  a  knapsack — a 
curious  collection  which  depicts  Felicite's  character. 
Every  great  mind,  on  visiting  this  spot,  will  be 
impressed  by  the  peculiar  beauties  of  the  landscape, 
which  extends,  a  treeless  waste,  beyond  the  park, 
the  last  vegetation  upon  terra  fir  ma.  The  melan- 
choly sheets  of  brackish  water,  separated  by  narrow 
white  ribbons  of  road,  along  which  the  paludier 
walks,  dressed  all  in  white,  raking  up  the  salt  and 
piling  it  in  mulons;  this  expanse  which  the  saline 
exhalations  prevent  the  birds  from  crossing,  thus 
nullifying  all  the  efforts  of  vegetation;  these  sands 
where  the  eye  is  relieved  only  by  a  little  coarse, 
persi^.ent  weed  with  pink  flowers,  and  by  the  Car- 
thusian pink;  this  salt  water  lake,  the  sand  dunes 
and  the  glimpse  of  Le  Croisic,  a  miniature  city 
planted,  like  Venice,  in  the  midst  of  the  sea;  and 
the  broad  Ocean  that  spreads  its  fringe  of  foam 
along  the  granite  cliffs,  bring  out  in  bolder  relief 
their  strange  shapes — it  is  a  spectacle  that  elevates 
the  mind  even  while  it  depresses  it,  the  effect 
always  produced  at  last  by  the  sublime,  awaken- 
ing regret  for  things  unknown  of  which  the  mind 
catches  a  glimpse  upon  a  hopeless  height  Where- 
fore these  savage  harmonies  are  congenial  to  none 
but  great  minds  and  great  sorrows.  The  rough, 
uneven  waste,  where  at  times  the  sun's  rays,  re- 
flected by  the  water  and  the  sands,  whiten  the 
village  of  Batz  and  gleam  upon  the  roofs  of  Le 
Croisic  with  a  pitiless  glare,   furnished  Camilla 


122  BEATRIX 

with  food  for  meditation  for  whole  days.  She 
turned  but  seldom  toward  the  cool,  refreshing  pros- 
pect of  the  thickets  and  flowering  hedges  by  which 
Guerande  is  enveloped,  like  a  bride,  with  flowers, 
ribbons,  veils  and  garlands.  She  was  suffering  then 
from  a  horrible,  unfamiliar  pain. 


As  soon  as  Calyste  saw  the  weathercocks  upon  the 
two  gables  appear  above  the  thorn-broom  along  the 
highway  and  the  distorted  heads  of  the  tall  pines, 
the  air  seemed  lighter;  Guerande  was  like  a  prison 
to  him,  his  life  was  at  Les  Touches. 

Who  cannot  understand  the  attraction  that  existed 
there  for  a  candid  young  man.  Love  like  Cheru- 
bino's,  which  brought  him  to  the  feet  of  a  young 
woman  who  became  a  goddess  to  him  before  he  saw 
her  as  a  woman,  was  destined  to  survive  Felicite's 
inexplicable  cruelty.  That  sentiment,  which  is  the 
need  of  loving  rather  than  love,  had  in  all  proba- 
bility not  escaped  the  searching  analysis  of  Camille 
Maupin,  and  thence,  perhaps,  came  her  refusal — an 
instance  of  noble-hearted  conduct  which  Calyste 
failed  to  understand.  Moreover,  there  the  marvels 
of  modern  civilization  were  the  more  impressive 
because  of  their  contrast  with  all  Guerande,  where 
the  poverty  of  the  Du  Guenics  was  regarded  as 
splendor.  There  Parisian  magnificence,  as  of  a 
new  world,  was  displayed  to  the  enchanted  gaze  of 
this  ignorant  youth,  who  knew  only  the  genista  of 
Bretagne  and  the  furze  of  La  Vendee;  and  in  like 
manner,  he  heard  a  resonant,  unfamiliar  language 
there.  Calyste  listened  to  the  poetic  accents  of  the 
loveliest  music,  the  marvelous  music  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  in  which  melody  and  harmony 
("3) 


124  BEATRIX 

contend  on  equal  terms,  in  which  vocalization  and 
instrumentation  have  both  attained  incredible  per- 
fection. He  saw  there  the  most  remarkable  pro- 
ductions of  the  brush,  those  of  the  French  school, 
the  heir  at  the  present  day  of  the  Italian,  Spanish 
and  Flemish  schools,  in  which  talent  has  become  so 
common  that  all  eyes  and  all  hearts,  weary  of  talent, 
are  calling  loudly  for  true  genius.  He  read  there 
works  of  the  imagination,  the  amazing  creations  of 
modern  literature,  which  produced  their  natural 
effect  upon  his  untried  heart.  In  short,  our  great 
nineteenth  century  was  exhibited  to  him  in  all  its 
varied  magnificence,  with  its  criticism,  its  efforts 
at  renovation  in  every  direction,  its  superhuman 
undertakings,  almost  all  on  a  scale  commensurate 
with  that  of  the  giant  whose  flags  were  the  swad- 
dling clothes  of  the  century  in  its  infancy,  and  who 
sang  hymns  to  it,  accompanied  by  the  awful  bass  of 
the  cannon. 

Introduced  by  Felicite  to  all  these  forms  of 
grandeur  which  escape  the  notice,  perhaps,  of  those 
who  give  birth  to  them  and  are  responsible  for  their 
appearance  on  the  stage,  Calyste  gratified,  at  Les 
Touches,  the  taste  for  the  marvelous  which  is  so 
strong  at  his  age,  and  that  outspoken  admiration, 
the  first  love  of  young  manhood,  which  takes  fire  so 
quickly  at  criticism.  It  is  so  natural  that  flame 
should  ascend!  He  listened  to  the  pretty  Parisian 
raillery,  the  refined  satire  which  revealed  to  him 
the  nature  of  French  wit,  and  awakened  a  thousand 
ideas  that  lay  sleeping  in  his  mind  in  the  soothing 


BEATRIX  125 

torpor  of  his  home  life.  In  his  eyes,  Mademoiselle 
des  Touches  was  the  mother  of  his  intelligence,  a 
mother  whom  he  could  love  without  guilt.  She 
was  so  good  to  him !  A  woman  is  always  adorable 
to  a  man  in  whom  she  inspires  love,  although  she 
does  not  seem  to  share  it 

At  this  time  Felicite  was  giving  him  music  les- 
sons. To  him  those  great  rooms  on  the  ground  floor, 
made  to  appear  still  greater  by  the  skilful  disposi- 
tion of  lawns  and  thickets  in  the  park;  the  stair- 
way, furnished  with  the  chefs-d'oeuvre  of  Italian 
patience,  carved  wood,  Venetian  and  Florentine 
mosaics,  bas-reliefs  in  ivory  and  marble,  curios 
manufactured  by  order  of  the  fairies  of  the  Middle 
Ages;  and  the  private  salon,  so  coquettish,  so  vo- 
luptuously artistic,  were  vivified,  illumined  by  a 
supernatural,  strange,  indefinable  light  and  spirit 
and  atmosphere.  Modern  society,  with  its  poetic 
conceptions,  presented  a  striking  contrast  to  the 
stupid,  patriarchal  society  of  Guerande,  when  the 
two  systems  were  brought  face  to  face.  On  one  side, 
the  innumerable  effects  of  art;  on  the  other,  the 
monotony  of  uncouth  Bretagne.  No  one  therefore 
will  wonder  why  the  poor  child,  intensely  bored,  as 
his  mother  was,  by  the  intricacies  of  the  moiiche, 
always  felt  a  thrill  of  excitement  as  he  rang  the 
bell,  crossed  the  courtyard  and  entered  the  house. 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  such  emotions  do  not  assail 
grown  men,  accustomed  to  life  and  its  drawbacks, 
whom  nothing  surprises  and  who  are  ready  for  any- 
thing. 


126  BEATRIX 

As  he  opened  the  door,  Calyste  heard  the  sound  of 
the  piano  and  supposed  that  Camille  was  in  the 
salon;  but  when  he  entered  the  billiard-room  he  no 
longer  heard  the  music.  Camille  was  playing, 
doubtless,  on  the  small  upright  piano  which  Conti 
had  brought  to  her  from  England  and  which  stood 
in  her  private  salon  above.  As  he  ascended  the 
stairs,  the  thick  carpet  entirely  deadening  the  sound 
of  his  footsteps,  Calyste  moved  more  and  more 
slowly.  He  realized  that  there  was  something  ex- 
traordinary about  the  music.  Felicite  was  playing 
for  herself  alone,  she  was  talking  to  herself,  as  it 
were.  Instead  of  entering  the  room,  the  young  man 
sat  down  upon  a  gothic  bench  upholstered  in  green 
velvet,  which  stood  at  one  side  of  the  landing,  be- 
neath a  window  artistically  framed  in  carved  wood- 
work, painted  nut-green  and  varnished. 

Nothing  could  be  more  weirdly  melancholy  than 
Camille's  improvisation;  you  would  have  said  it 
was  a  human  soul  singing  a  De  Profundis  to  God 
from  the  depths  of  the  tomb.  The  young  lover 
recognized  therein  the  prayer  of  despairing  love,  the 
mild  lament  of  the  resigned  heart,  the  wailing  of 
repressed  suffering.  Camille  had  elaborated, 
varied,  modified  the  cavatina,  Grdce  pour  toi,  grace 
pour  moi,  which  makes  up  almost  the  whole  of  the 
fourth  act  of  Robert  le  Diable, 

Suddenly  she  began  to  sing  in  a  heartrending 
tone,  then  as  suddenly  broke  off.  Calyste  entered 
the  room  and  discovered  the  cause  of  the  interrup- 
tion.    Poor  Camille  Maupin,  lovely  Felicite,  turned 


BEATRIX  127 

to  him,  without  a  trace  of  coquetry,  a  face  bathed  in 
tears,  took  her  handkerchief  and  wiped  her  eyes, 
and  said  simply: 

"Bonjour." 

She  was  fascinating  in  her  morning  toilet  She 
had  on  her  head,  one  of  the  red  velvet  nets  then  in 
vogue,  and  clusters  of  glossy  black  hair  escaped 
through  its  meshes.  A  very  short  redingote  formed 
a  modern  Greek  tunic,  which  disclosed  a  pair  of  fine 
linen  pantalettes  with  embroidered  ruffles,  and  the 
prettiest  red  and  gold  Turkish  slippers. 

"What  is  it?"  said  Calyste. 

"He  hasn't  come  back,"  she  replied,  standing  at 
the  window  and  looking  out  over  the  sand,  the  arm 
of  the  sea  and  the  marshes. 

This  reply  explained  her  toilet  Camille  was  ap- 
parently waiting  for  Claude  Vignon,  and  she  was 
annoyed  as  a  woman  is  who  has  put  herself  out  for 
nothing.  A  man  of  thirty  would  have  seen  that 
Calyste  saw  nothing  but  Camille's  grief. 

"You  are  anxious?"  he  asked. 

"Yes,"  said  she,  in  a  melancholy  tone  which  the 
youth  could  not  analyze. 

He  walked  quickly  to  the  door. 

"Well,  where  are  you  going?" 

"To  find  him,"  he  replied. 

"Dear  boy!"  said  she,  taking  his  hand  and  keep- 
ing him  beside  her  with  one  of  those  melting  glances 
which  are  the  most  delicious  of  rewards  to  a  youth- 
ful heart  "Are  you  mad?  How  do  you  expect  to 
find  him  on  this  coast.?" 


128  BEATRIX 

"I  will  find  him." 

"Your  mother  would  be  terrified  to  death.  Come, 
stay  with  me.  I  insist  upon  it,"  she  said,  leading 
him  to  a  seat  on  the  divan.  "Don't  throw  away  any 
sympathy  on  me.  These  tears  that  you  see  are  the 
kind  of  tears  that  give  us  pleasure.  We  have  a 
faculty  that  men  have  not,  of  abandoning  ourselves 
to  our  nervous  nature  by  carrying  sentiment  to  ex- 
tremes. By  imagining  certain  situations  and  acting 
accordingly,  we  work  ourselves  up  until  we  begin  to 
weep  and  sometimes  fall  into  a  serious  condition, 
become  really  ill.  Our  fancies  are  not  vagaries  of 
the  mind,  but  of  the  heart.  You  came  just  in  time, 
for  solitude  is  not  at  all  what  I  need.  I  was  not  de- 
ceived by  his  pretended  desire  to  visit  Le  Croisic 
without  me,  and  Batz  and  the  cliffs  and  sand  and 
salt  marshes.  I  knew  he  would  be  gone  several 
days  instead  of  one.  He  wanted  to  leave  us  alone ; 
he  is  jealous,  or  rather,  he  is  playing  at  jealousy. 
You  are  young  and  handsome." 

"Don't  you  tell  me  that!  Must  I  not  come  any 
more.?"  asked  Calyste,  with  difficulty  restraining  a 
tear  that  at  last  rolled  down  his  cheek  affecting 
Felicite  keenly. 

"You  are  an  angel !"  she  cried. 

Thereupon  she  gayly  sang  Mathilda's  Bleibe  from 
IVilhelm  Tell,  to  divest  of  all  trace  of  solemnity, 
that  magnificent  reply  of  the  princess  to  her  subject. 

"His  purpose  was,"  she  continued,  "to  make  me 
believe  that  his  love  for  me  is  greater  than  it  is. 
He  knows  the  extent  of  my  good  wishes  for  him," 


BEATRIX  129 

she  said,  watching  Calyste  closely;  "but  he  is 
humiliated  perhaps  to  find  himself  inferior  to  me  in 
that  respect  Perhaps,  too,  he  has  conceived  some 
suspicion  of  you  and  wants  to  take  us  by  surprise. 
But,  even  if  he  is  guilty  of  nothing  worse  than  going 
off  to  enjoy  that  wild  walk  without  me,  failing  to 
make  me  his  partner  in  his  excursions  and  in  the 
thoughts  with  which  these  sights  inspire  him,  and 
causing  me  mortal  anxiety — is  not  that  enough  ?  I 
am  no  more  truly  loved  by  this  great  intellect  than 
I  was  by  the  musician,  the  wit,  the  soldier.  Sterne 
is  right:  names  have  some  significance  and  mine  is 
the  most  cruel  mockery.  I  shall  die  without  finding 
in  any  man  the  love  1  have  in  my  heart,  the  poetic 
imaginings  I  have  in  my  mind." 

She  sat  with  her  arms  hanging  by  her  sides,  her 
head  resting  against  the  cushion,  her  eyes  staring 
blankly  at  a  flower  in  the  carpet.  The  suffering  of 
superior  intellects  has  something  grand  and  impos- 
ing, it  reveals  a  vast  expanse  of  mind  to  which  the 
spectator's  imagination  imparts  even  greater  propor- 
tions. Such  minds  partake  of  the  privileges  of  roy- 
alty, which,  through  its  hold  upon  the  hearts  of  a 
people,  makes  itself  felt  throughout  the  world. 

"Why  did  you — ?"  Calyste  began,  but  he  could 
not  finish. 

Camille  Maupin's  lovely,  burning  hand  was  laid 
upon  his  and  its  eloquent  touch  interrupted  him. 

"Nature  changed  its  laws  for  my  benefit  by 
granting  me  five  or  six  additional  years  of  youth.  I 
turned  you  away  from  selfishness.  Sooner  or  later, 
9 


130  BEATRIX 

age  would  have  separated  us.  I  am  thirteen  years 
older  than  he,  and  that  is  bad  enough." 

"You  will  be  lovely  at  sixty!"  cried  Calyste, 
heroically. 

"May  God  grant  it!"  she  replied  with  a  smile. 
"However,  dear  boy,  I  choose  to  love  him.  Despite 
his  insensibility,  his  lack  of  imagination,  his  cow- 
ardly indifference,  and  the  envy  that  consumes  him, 
1  believe  that  there  is  some  grandeur  under  the  rags 
and  1  hope  to  galvanize  his  heart,  to  save  him  from 
himself,  to  attach  him  to  me — Alas!  my  mind  is 
clear-sighted  but  my  heart  is  blind." 

Her  outspokenness  concerning  herself  was  terri- 
fying. She  suffered  and  analyzed  her  suffering,  as 
Cuvier  and  Dupuytren  explained  to  their  friends 
the  fatal  advance  of  their  disease  and  the  progress 
death  was  making  in  them.  Camille  Maupin  un- 
derstood herself  as  thoroughly  in  the  matter  of 
passion  as  those  two  scientists  did  in  the  matter 
of  anatomy. 

"I  brought  him  here  in  order  to  be  able  to  form 
a  just  estimate  of  his  character,  and  he  is  bored 
already.  He  misses  Paris,  and  I  have  told  him  so; 
he  has  the  critic's  homesickness,  having  neither 
author  to  pluck,  nor  theory  to  pull  to  pieces,  nor 
poet  to  drive  to  desperation,  and  he  dares  not  indulge 
here  in  a  debauch  which  would  enable  him  to  lay 
aside  for  a  time  the  burden  of  his  thoughts.  Alas ! 
my  love  is  not  true  enough,  perhaps,  to  relax  the 
tension  bf  his  brain.  In  short,  I  do  not  intoxicate 
him !    Get  tipsy  with  him  to-night;  I  will  say  1  am 


BEATRIX  131 

ill  and  stay  in  my  room,  and  then  I  shall  find  out 
whether  I  am  mistaken." 

Calyste  became  as  red  as  a  cherry,  red  from  his 
chin  to  the  roots  of  his  hair  and  his  ears  were  edged 
with  fire. 

"Mon  Dieu!"  she  cried,  "here  am  I  thoughtlessly 
corrupting  your  maidenly  innocence!  Forgive  me, 
Calyste.  When  you  fall  in  love,  you  will  under- 
stand that  one  is  capable  of  setting  the  Seine  on  fire 
to  afford  the  slightest  pleasure  to  the  beloved  object, 
as  the  fortune-tellers  say." 

She  paused  a  moment. 

"There  are  proud,  consistent  people  who  exclaim 
at  a  certain  age:  'If  I  were  to  begin  life  anew, 
I  would  do  as  I  have  done!'  But  1, — who  do 
not  consider  myself  weak, — 1  exclaim :  'I  would  be 
a  woman  like  your  mother,  Calyste.'  To  have  a 
Calyste — what  bliss!  If  1  had  taken  for  my  hus- 
band the  most  clownish  of  men,  I  would  have  been 
a  humble,  submissive  wife.  And  yet,  I  have  been 
guilty  of  no  offence  against  society,  I  have  wronged 
no  one  but  myself.  Alas!  dear  boy,  woman  can 
no  more  go  alone  in  society  than  in  what  is  called 
her  primitive  state.  The  affections  which  are  not 
in  harmony  with  social  and  natural  laws,  the  affec- 
tions which  are  not  forced  in  a  word,  avoid  us.  It 
is  as  well  to  be  of  some  use  in  the  world  as  to  suffer 
for  the  sake  of  suffering.  What  do  I  care  for  the 
children  of  my  Faucombe  cousins,  who  are  not 
Faucombes,  whom  I  have  not  seen  for  twenty  years, 
and  who,   in  addition,  have    married    merchants.? 


132  BEATRIX 

You  are  a  son  who  never  cost  me  the  cares  of  ma- 
ternity, I  will  leave  my  fortune  to  you,  and  you 
will  be  happy,  in  that  respect  at  least,  through  my 
means,  my  precious  treasure  of  grace  and  beauty 
which  nothing  can  change  or  wither." 

After  these  words,  spoken  in  a  deep  voice,  she 
lowered  her  beautiful  eyelids  in  order  that  he  might 
read  nothing  in  her  eyes. 

"You  have  refused  to  take  anything  from  me," 
said  Calyste,  "and  I  would  return  your  fortune  to 
your  heirs." 

"Child!"  said  Camille  in  the  same  deep  voice, 
while  the  tears  rolled  down  her  cheeks.  "In 
heaven's  name,  will  nothing  save  me  from  myself . J*" 

"You  have  a  story  to  tell  me  and  a  letter  to — " 
said  the  noble-hearted  youth,  to  turn  her  mind  from 
her  sorrow. 

But  he  did  not  finish;  she  cut  him  short. 

"You  are  right,  one  must  keep  one's  word  before 
everything.  It  was  too  late  yesterday,  but  it  seems 
that  we  shall  have  plenty  of  time  to  ourselves  to- 
day," she  said  in  a  tone  that  was  at  once  pleasant 
and  bitter.  "Before  I  begin  to  fulfil  my  promise, 
I  am  going  to  move  my  chair  so  that  I  can  keep  my 
eye  on  the  road  leading  to  the  cliffs." 

Calyste  moved  a  great  gothic  easy-chair  in  the 
direction  indicated  and  opened  the  window.  Ca- 
mille Maupin,  who  shared  the  Oriental  taste  of  the 
illustrious  writer  of  her  sex,  took  a  magnificent  Per- 
sian nargileh  that  an  ambassador  had  given  her; 
she  filled  the  bowl  with  patchouli,  cleaned  the  tube. 


BEATRIX  133 

perfumed  the  quill  mouthpiece,  which  she  made  her- 
self and  used  only  once,  lighted  the  yellow  leaves, 
placed  the  long-necked  blue  and  gold  enamel  bowl 
of  the  lovely  instrument  of  pleasure  a  few  steps 
away,  and  rang  for  tea. 

"Will  you  have  a  cigarette?  Oh!  I  am  con- 
stantly forgetting  that  you  never  smoke.  Such 
purity  as  yours  is  so  rare !  It  seems  that  no  hand 
save  that  of  an  Eve  fresh  from  the  hands  of  God  is 
fit  to  caress  the  satin-like  down  upon  your  cheeks." 

Calyste  blushed  and  took  his  place  upon  a  stool ; 
he  did  not  see  the  profound  emotion  that  made 
Camille  blush. 

"The  person  from  whom  I  received  this  letter 
yesterday,  and  who  will,  perhaps,  be  here  to-mor- 
row," said  Felicite,  "is  the  Marquise  de  Rochefide. 
Old  Rochefide,  whose  family  is  not  so  old  as  yours, 
after  he  had  married  his  oldest  daughter  to  a  great 
Portuguese  nobleman  who  is  permanently  estab- 
lished in  France,  was  determined  to  arrange  an  alli- 
ance for  his  son  with  the  old  nobility,  in  order  to 
put  him  in  a  way  to  obtain  the  peerage  that  the 
father  had  been  unable  to  obtain  for  himself.  The 
Comtesse  de  Montcornet  told  him  of  a  young  woman 
in  the  Department  of  Orne,  a  Mademoiselle  Beatrix- 
Maximilienne-Rose  de  Casteran,  younger  daughter 
of  the  Marquis  de  Casteran,  who  wanted  to  marry 
his  two  daughters  without  dowries,  in  order  to  re- 
serve his  whole  fortune  for  the  Comte  de  Casteran, 
his  son.  The  Casterans  trace  their  descent  back  to 
Adam,  so  it  seems.     Beatrix,  who  was  born  and 


134  BEATRIX 

brought  up  at  the  Chateau  de  Casteran,  was  at  this 
time — the  marriage  took  place  in  1828 — about 
twenty  years  old.  She  was  remarkable  for  what 
you  provincials  call  originality,  which  is  nothing 
more  than  a  certain  superiority  in  the  matter  of 
ideas,  exaltation,  appreciation  of  the  beautiful,  and 
enthusiasm  for  works  of  art  Take  the  word  of  a 
poor  woman  who  has  allowed  herself  to  follow  that 
delusive  path,  there  is  nothing  more  dangerous  for 
a  woman  to  do;  by  following  it  you  arrive  where 
you  find  the  marchioness  and  myself  at  this  mo- 
ment— at  the  bottom  of  the  pit.  Men  alone  have 
the  staves  with  which  to  assist  their  steps  along 
those  precipices,  a  force  which  we  lack  and  which 
makes  monsters  of  us  when  we  possess  it  Her  old 
grandmother,  the  dowager  Marquise  de  Casteran, 
was  delighted  to  see  her  marry  a  man  whose 
superior  she  was  certain  to  be  in  birth  and  in  ideas. 
The  Rochefides  did  things  very  handsomely,  and 
Beatrix  had  no  reason  to  speak  otherwise  than 
kindly  of  them;  in  like  manner,  the  Rochefides  had 
every  reason  to  be  content  with  the  Casterans,  who, 
being  allied  to  the  Verneuils,  the  D'Esgrignons,  the 
Troisvilles,  obtained  the  peerage  for  their  son-in- 
law  in  the  last  great  batch  of  peers  created  by 
Charles  X. — peers  whose  patents  were  rescinded  by 
the  Revolution  of  July.  Rochefide  is  a  good  deal 
of  a  fool ;  nevertheless,  he  began  by  having  a  son ; 
and,  as  he  wearied  his  wife  beyond  endurance,  she 
soon  had  enough  of  him.  The  first  days  of  married 
life  are  a  dangerous  reef  for  petty  minds  as  well  as 


BEATRIX  135 

for  grand  passions.  In  his  capacity  of  fool,  Rochefide 
mistook  his  wife's  ignorance  for  coldness,  he  classed 
Beatrix  among  lymphatic,  insensible  women;  she  is 
a  blonde,  and,  starting  from  that  fact,  he  considered 
himself  entirely  safe  to  live  as  a  bachelor,  relying 
upon  the  marchioness's  supposed  coldness,  her  vir- 
tue, her  pride  and  upon  a  pompous  manner  of  life 
which  builds  a  thousand  barriers  about  a  woman  at 
Paris.  You  will  see  what  1  mean  when  you  visit 
that  city.  Those  people  who  counted  upon  taking 
advantage  of  his  heedless  tranquillity,  said  to  him: 
'You  are  very  fortunate ;  you  have  a  cold-blooded 
wife  who  will  have  only  passions  of  the  head;  she 
is  content  to  shine  intellectually,  her  caprices  are 
purely  artistic;  her  jealousy,  her  desires  will  be 
satisfied  if  she  can  form  a  salon  where  she  can  as- 
semble all  the  bright  minds  of  the  day;  she  will 
have  musical  debauches,  orgies  of  literature.'  And 
the  husband  swallowed  this  pleasantry,  by  which 
clowns  are  mystified  in  Paris.  And  yet  Rochefide 
is  no  ordinary  clown:  he  has  as  much  vanity  and 
pride  as  a  man  of  intellect,  with  this  difference, 
that  men  of  intellect  rub  themselves  with  modesty 
and  make  cats  of  themselves;  they  caress  you  in 
order  to  be  caressed;  while  Rochefide  has  a  great, 
big,  red,  blooming  self-esteem  that  admires  itself  in 
public  and  is  forever  smiling.  His  vanity  airs  it- 
self in  the  stables  and  feeds  noisily  as  it  draws  its 
fodder  from  the  rack.  He  has  those  failings  which 
are  known  only  to  those  who  are  so  situated  as  to 
pass  judgment  upon  them  in  private,  which  impress 


136  BEATRIX 

one  only  in  the  shadow  and  mystery  of  private  life, 
while,  in  society,  and  to  society,  a  man  may  seem 
delightful;  Rochefide  was  certain  to  be  quite  insup- 
portable as  soon  as  he  should  believe  that  the 
sanctity  of  his  fireside  was  threatened,  for,  he  has 
that  squint-eyed,  despicable  jealousy,  that  is  brutal 
when  it  is  detected,  skulks  like  a  coward  for  six 
months  and  becomes  murderous  the  seventh.  He 
thought  to  deceive  his  wife  and  he  would  fear  her 
— two  causes  of  tyranny — on  the  day  he  should  per- 
ceive that  the  marchioness  was  charitable  enough  to 
pretend  to  be  indifferent  to  his  infidelity.  I  give 
you  this  analysis  of  his  character,  in  order  to  ex- 
plain Beatrix's  conduct  The  marchioness  conceived 
the  warmest  admiration  for  me,  but  from  admiration 
to  jealousy  is  only  a  step.  I  have  one  of  the  most 
noteworthy  salons  in  Paris,  she  desired  to  form  one 
of  her  own  and  tried  to  take  my  people  away  from 
me.  I  don't  care  to  keep  those  who  want  to  leave 
me.  She  collected  a  lot  of  superficial  people  who 
are  friendly  to  everybody  from  sheer  indolence,  and 
whose  one  aim  is  to  leave  a  salon  as  soon  as  they 
enter  it;  but  she  hadn't  time  to  found  a  society. 
In  those  days,  I  thought  she  was  simply  consumed 
with  a  thirst  for  celebrity  of  some  sort.  Neverthe- 
less, she  has  grandeur  of  mind,  a  truly  royal  pride, 
ideas  of  her  own,  and  a  marvelous  faculty  for 
imagining  and  understanding  everything;  she  will 
talk  of  metaphysics  and  music,  theology  and  paint- 
ing. You  will  see  in  her,  as  a  woman,  what  we  saw 
when  she  was  a  young  bride;  but  there  is  a  touch 


BEATRIX  137 

of  affectation  in  her;  she  makes  too  much  show  of 
knowing  difficult  things,  Chinese  or  Hebrew,  of 
having  a  shrewd  idea  of  hieroglyphics  or  of  being 
able  to  explain  the  papyrus  in  which  the  mummies 
are  wrapped.  Beatrix  is  one  of  those  blondes  beside 
whom  the  blonde  Eve  would  look  like  a  negress. 
She  is  as  slender  and  straight  as  a  wax  taper  and  as 
white  as  the  sacramental  wafer;  her  face  is  long 
and  pointed,  her  complexion  somewhat  variable,  to- 
day of  the  color  of  fine  lawn,  to-morrow  brown  and 
spotted  at  a  thousand  points  under  the  skin,  as  if 
the  blood  had  deposited  grains  of  dust  there  during 
the  night;  her  forehead  is  magnificent,  but  a  little 
too  bold ;  her  pupils  are  pale  sea-green  and  float  in  the 
whites  of  her  eyes  behind  scanty  lashes  and  beneath 
slothful  lids.  She  often  has  rings  around  her  eyes. 
Her  nose,  which  describes  a  quadrant  of  a  circle,  is 
very  thin  between  the  nostrils,  indicating  much 
subtlety,  but  rather  impertinent.  She  has  the  Aus- 
trian mouth ;  the  upper  lip  is  more  prominent  than 
the  lower,  which  falls  in  a  disdainful  fashion.  Her 
pale  cheeks  do  not  flush  except  under  the  spur  of 
intense  emotion.  Her  chin  is  quite  fat;  mine  is 
none  too  thin,  and  perhaps  I  may  do  wrong  to  tell 
you  that  women  with  fat  chins  are  exacting  in  love. 
She  has  one  of  the  loveliest  figures  I  have  ever  seen, 
a  back  of  dazzling  whiteness,  formerly  very  flat, 
but  developed  now,  and  filled  out,  so  they  say;  but 
the  waist  has  not  been  so  fortunate  as  the  shoulders, 
and  the  arms  have  remained  thin.  She  has  a  free 
and  easy  carriage  and  manners,  however,  that  atone 


138  BEATRIX 

for  whatever  defects  she  may  have  and  serve  ad- 
mirably to  bring  out  her  attractions.  Nature  has 
given  her  that  regal  air  that  cannot  be  acquired;  it 
becomes  her  well  and  suddenly  reveals  the  woman 
of  noble  birth,  harmonizing,  as  it  does,  with  the 
slender  but  deliciously  graceful  hips,  with  the 
prettiest  foot  in  the  world,  and  with  the  luxuriant 
angel's  hair  which  Girodet's  brush  has  so  often 
represented,  and  which  resembles  floods  of  light. 
Although  she  is  not  flawlessly  lovely  or  pretty,  she 
produces  an  ineradicable  impression  when  she 
chooses.  She  has  only  to  array  herself  in  cherry 
velvet  with  lace  flounces  and  wear  red  roses  in  her 
hair,  and  she  is  divine.  If,  on  any  pretext,  she 
could  wear  the  costume  of  the  days  when  women 
wore  pointed  bodices  with  stomachers  of  ribbons 
rising  slender  and  tapering  from  the  puffed-out 
amplitude  of  brocade  petticoats  with  stiff,  broad 
folds,  when  they  were  surrounded  with  plaited 
ruffles,  hid  their  arms  in  slashed  sleeves  with  lace 
wristbands  from  which  the  hand  protruded  like  the 
pistil  from  its  calyx,  and  when  they  confined  their 
countless  stray  curls  about  a  headdress  studded 
with  jewels, — Beatrix  would  contend  on  even  terms 
with  the  ideal  beauties  you  see  dressed  like  this." 

Felicite  showed  Calyste  a  lovely  copy  of  Mieris's 
picture  of  a  woman  in  white  satin,  standing,  hold- 
ing a  piece  of  music  and  singing  with  a  Barbantine 
gentleman,  while  a  negro  is  pouring  Spanish  wine 
into  a  wineglass,  and  an  old  maidservant  is  ar- 
ranging biscuits  on  a  table. 


BEATRIX  139 

"Blondes,"  she  continued,  "have  the  great  ad- 
vantage of  diversity  over  us  brunettes;  there  are  a 
hundred  different  types  of  blondes,  and  there  is 
only  one  type  of  brunettes.  Blondes  are  more  the 
woman  than  we ;  we  French  brunettes  are  too  much 
like  men.  But  don't  go  and  fall  in  love  with  Beatrix 
from  the  portrait  I  have  drawn  of  her,  like  some 
prince  or  other  of  the  Thousand  and  One  Days. 
You  would  arrive  too  late  again,  my  poor  boy.  But 
let  me  console  you.  In  this  case,  it's  the  first  comer 
who  gets  the  bones!" 

These  words  were  said  with  a  purpose.  The 
admiration  depicted  upon  the  young  man's  face  was 
aroused  by  the  painting  rather  than  by  the  painter, 
whose  manner  missed  its  aim. 

"Although  she  is  a  blonde,"  she  continued. 
"Beatrix  has  not  the  delicate  beauty  adapted  to 
her  complexion;  the  lines  of  her  face  are  severe, 
she  is  elegant  and  harsh;  her  face  is  like  a  rough 
sketch  and  you  would  say  that  she  has  the  ardor  of 
a  Southron  in  her  heart.  She  is  an  angel  who 
flashes  and  shrivels  up.  Her  eyes  are  thirsty.  She 
appears  to  the  best  advantage  when  you  look  her 
squarely  in  the  face;  sidewise,  her  face  looks  as  if 
it  had  been  caught  between  two  doors.  You  will 
see  if  I  am  mistaken.  This  is  what  brought  about 
our  intimacy.  For  three  years,  from  1828  to  1831, 
Beatrix,  while  making  the  most  of  the  last  fetes  of 
the  Restoration,  going  from  salon  to  salon,  frequent- 
ing the  court  and  adorning  the  costume  balls  at  the 
Elysee-Bourbon,    formed    judgments    of  men    and 


140  BEATRIX 

things  and  events  and  life  in  general,  from  her  own 
exalted  point  of  view.  Her  mind  was  fully  occu- 
pied. The  first  moment  of  giddiness  caused  by  her 
entrance  into  society  prevented  her  heart  from 
awaking,  and  it  was  still  benumbed  by  the  first  an- 
noyances of  marriage;  the  child,  the  lying-in,  and 
all  the  bother  of  maternity,  which  I  do  not  like. 
I  am  not  a  woman  in  that  respect.  I  cannot  endure 
children;  they  cause  one  constant  annoyance  and 
anxiety.  For  that  reason,  I  think  that  one  of  the 
great  blessings  of  modern  society,  of  which  we  were 
deprived  by  that  hypocrite  of  a  Jean- Jacques,  was 
that  of  leaving  us  free  to  be  mothers  or  not  as  we 
chose.  I  may  not  be  the  only  one  who  thinks  so,  but 
I  am  the  only  one  who  says  it.  From  1830  to  1831, 
during  the  storm,  Beatrix  was  in  the  country  on  her 
husband's  estate,  as  bored  as  any  saint  in  his  stall 
in  paradise.  On  her  return  to  Paris,  the  marchion- 
ess concluded,  justly  perhaps,  that  the  revolution, 
although  in  the  eyes  of  many  people  a  purely  polit- 
ical one,  was  destined  to  be  a  moral  revolution. 
The  social  circle  to  which  she  belonged  had  been 
unable  to  reconstruct  itself  during  the  unexpected 
overthrow  of  the  fifteen  years  of  the  Restoration, 
and  was  crumbling  to  pieces  beneath  the  blows  of 
the  battering  ram  handled  by  the  bourgeoisie.  She 
had  heard  Monsieur  Laine's  famous  remark :  'Kings 
are  making  their  exit!'  That  idea  was  not  without 
influence  upon  her  conduct,  I  think.  She  took  an 
intelligent  part  in  spreading  the  new  doctrines, 
which  bred  like  flies  in  the  sun  during  the  three 


BEATRIX  141 

years  after  July,  and  wrought  havoc  in  several 
female  brains;  but,  like  all  the  nobles,  when  she 
took  up  with  these  glorious  novelties  she  was  de- 
sirous of  saving  the  nobility.  When  she  saw  that 
there  was  no  longer  any  place  for  individual  superi- 
ority, when  she  saw  the  great  nobility  beginning 
anew  the  silent  opposition  they  had  offered  to  Na- 
poleon— which  was  the  only  role  for  them  to  play, 
under  the  Empire  of  action  and  deeds,  but  which 
in  a  moral  epoch  was  equivalent  to  resigning  their 
privileges — she  preferred  happiness  to  that  policy 
of  silence.  When  we  were  able  to  breathe  freely, 
the  marchioness  met  at  my  house  the  man  with 
whom  I  expected  to  end  my  days, — Gennaro  Conti, 
the  great  composer,  of  Neapolitan  extraction  but 
born  at  Marseilles.  Conti  is  a  very  bright  man  and 
a  talented  composer,  although  he  can  never  reach 
the  highest  rank.  If  there  were  no  Meyerbeer  or 
Rossini,  he  might  perhaps  pass  for  a  man  of  genius. 
He  has  one  advantage  over  them :  in  vocal  music, 
he  is  what  Paganini  is  on  the  violin,  Liszt  on  the 
piano,  Taglioni  in  dancing — in  a  word,  he  is  what 
Garat  was,  and  he  recalls  that  famous  singer  to 
those  who  heard  him.  It  is  not  a  voice,  my  friend, 
but  a  soul.  When  his  singing  answers  certain 
thoughts  and  feelings  difficult  to  describe,  which  a 
woman  sometimes  has,  she  is  lost  when  she  listens 
to  Gennaro.  The  marchioness  conceived  the 
wildest  passion  for  him  and  took  him  away  from 
me.  It  was  an  excessively  provincial  performance, 
but  fair  fighting.     She  won  my  esteem   and  my 


142  BEATRIX 

friendship  by  the  way  she  behaved  toward  me. 
She  looked  upon  me  as  a  woman  who  would  defend 
my  property,  for  she  did  not  know  that,  in  my  eyes, 
the  most  absurd  thing  in  the  world  under  such  cir- 
cumstances is  the  object  of  the  contest.  She  came 
to  me.  The  proud  creature  was  so  deeply  in  love 
that  she  betrayed  her  secret  to  me  and  made  me  the 
arbiter  of  her  destiny.  She  was  adorable :  she  was 
still  a  woman  and  a  marchioness  in  my  eyes.  I 
will  tell  you,  my  friend,  that  women  may  be  bad 
sometimes,  but  they  have  hidden  elements  of 
grandeur  which  men  will  never  learn  to  appreciate. 
And  so,  as  I  can  take  my  oath  to  it  as  a  woman, 
standing  on  the  brink  of  the  old  age  that  awaits  me, 
I  will  tell  you  that  I  was  faithful  to  Conti,  that  I 
would  have  been  faithful  to  him  until  death,  and 
yet  I  knew  him.  His  is  a  nature  charming  on  the 
exterior,  but  detestable  at  bottom.  He  is  a  charla- 
tan in  things  pertaining  to  the  heart  There  are  men, 
like  Nathan,  whom  I  have  mentioned  to  you,  who  are 
charlatans  on  the  outside  and  in  perfect  good  faith. 
Such  men  lie  to  themselves.  They  walk  about  on 
their  stilts,  thinking  they  are  on  their  feet,  and  do 
their  juggling  with  a  sort  of  innocence;  their  vanity 
is  in  their  blood;  they  are  born  comedians  and 
braggarts  and  are  made  up  as  extravagantly  as  a 
Chinese  vase;  they  will  laugh  at  themselves  per- 
haps. Their  disposition  is  generous,  however,  and, 
like  Murat's  gorgeous  royal  costume,  it  attracts 
danger. 

But  Conti's  knavery  will   never   be   known  to 


BEATRIX  143 

anyone  but  his  mistress.  He  has,  in  the  matter 
of  his  art,  the  famed  Italian  jealousy  that  led  Car- 
lone  to  murder  Piola,  and  procured  Paesiello  a  blow 
from  a  dagger.  This  terrible  passion  is  hidden 
behind  the  most  amiable  good-fellowship.  Conti 
hasn't  the  courage  of  his  vice;  he  smiles  at  Meyer- 
beer and  compliments  him  when  he  would  like  to 
tear  him  limb  from  limb.  He  feels  his  weakness 
and  affects  an  appearance  of  strength ;  and  then  his 
vanity  leads  him  to  feign  the  sentiments  that  are 
farthest  from  his  heart.  He  claims  to  be  an  artist 
who  receives  inspiration  from  Heaven.  In  his  eyes, 
art  is  something  holy  and  sacred.  He  is  a  fanatic, 
he  is  sublime  in  the  mocking  tone  he  adopts  with 
men  of  the  world ;  his  eloquence  seems  to  proceed 
from  profound  conviction.  He  is  a  seer,  a  demon,  a 
god,  an  angel.  Indeed  Calyste,  although  warned 
against  him,  you  will  be  his  dupe.  This  Southerner, 
this  fervid  artist,  is  as  cold  as  a  well-chain.  Listen 
to  him;  the  artist  is  a  missionary,  art  is  a  religion 
which  has  its  priests  and  should  have  its  martyrs. 
When  he  is  once  started  on  this  theme,  Gennaro 
attains  the  most  convulsive  pathos  that  a  professor 
of  German  philosophy  ever  vented  upon  his  audi- 
tory. You  admire  his  convictions,  but  he  believes 
in  nothing.  As  he  wafts  you  up  to  Heaven  with  a 
song  that  seems  like  a  mysterious,  love-diffusing 
vapor,  he  bestows  an  ecstatic  glance  upon  you;  but 
he  has  an  eye  upon  your  admiration  and  is  wonder- 
ing: *Am  I  really  a  god  in  their  eyes?'  At  the 
same  moment  he  may  be  saying  to  himself :    *I  have 


144  BEATRIX 

eaten  too  much  macaroni.'  You  believe  that  he 
loves  you,  but  he  hates  you,  and  you  know  not 
why ;  but  I  knew :  he  had  seen  another  woman  the 
day  before  and  had  taken  it  into  his  head  to  fall  in 
love  with  her,  and  he  insulted  me  with  pretended 
love,  with  hypocritical  caresses,  making  me  pay 
dearly  for  his  forced  fidelity.  In  a  word,  he  has  an 
insatiable  thirst  for  applause,  he  sportively  apes 
and  ridicules  everybody ;  he  feigns  joy  as  well  as 
sorrow,  but  he  succeeds,  withal,  to  admiration. 
He  makes  himself  agreeable,  we  fall  in  love  with 
him;  he  can  win  admiration  when  he  chooses. 
When  I  left  him,  I  abhorred  his  voice,  but  he  owes 
more  of  his  success  to  it  than  to  his  talent  as  a 
composer ;  and  yet  he  prefers  to  be  a  man  of  genius 
like  Rossini  rather  than  a  performer  of  Rubini's 
force.  1  had  made  the  mistake  of  attaching  myself 
to  him,  I  was  resigned  to  the  fate  of  hanging  gar- 
lands on  the  idol  to  the  end.  Conti,  like  many 
artists,  is  a  dainty  creature ;  he  loves  his  ease,  his 
little  pleasures;  he  is  coquettish,  dandified,  well- 
dressed;  oh!  well,  I  flattered  all  his  passions,  I 
loved  that  weak,  cunning  nature.  I  was  envied 
and  I  sometimes  smiled  in  pity.  I  judged  his  cour- 
age fairly;  he  is  physically  brave,  and  physical 
bravery,  they  say,  is  the  only  virtue  in  which  there 
is  no  hypocrisy.  I  saw  him  put  to  the  test  on  one 
occasion,  while  we  were  traveling  together :  he  did 
not  hesitate  to  risk  his  life,  dearly  as  he  loves  it; 
but,  strangely  enough,  in  Paris,  I  have  known  him 
to  commit  what  I  call  poltroonery  of  thought     My 


BEATRIX  145 

friend,  1  knew  all  these  things.  1  said  to  the  poor 
marchioness : 

"  'You  don't  know  what  a  trap  you  are  putting 
your  foot  into.  You  are  the  Perseus  of  a  poor  mis- 
erable Andromeda,  you  will  set  me  free  from  my 
rock.  If  he  love  you,  so  much  the  better !  but  I 
doubt  it,  for  he  loves  no  one  but  himself. ' 

"Gennarowas  in  the  seventh  heaven  of  pride.  I 
was  not  a  marchioness,  I  was  not  born  a  Casteran, 
I  was  forgotten  in  a  day.  I  took  a  fierce  delight  in 
going  to  the  bottom  of  that  nature.  Having  no 
doubt  as  to  the  certain  end,  I  determined  to  watch 
Conti's  twisting  and  turning.  My  poor  boy,  in  a 
week,  I  was  treated  to  perfect  horrors  in  the  way  of 
sentiment,  the  most  infamous  buffoonery.  I  will 
not  go  into  details,  for  you  will  see  the  man  here. 
But,  as  he  knows  that  I  know  him,  he  hates  me 
to-day.  If  he  could  poniard  me  with  any  hope  of 
impunity,  I  should  not  live  two  seconds.  I  have 
never  said  a  word  to  Beatrix.  Gennaro's  last  and 
never-failing  insult  is  to  believe  that  I  am  capable 
of  imparting  my  melancholy  knowledge  to  the  mar- 
chioness. He  is  anxious  and  thoughtful  every 
moment;  for  he  does  not  believe  that  anyone  on 
earth  is  possessed  of  decent  feelings.  He  is  still 
playing  with  me  the  part  of  a  man  unhappy  at  hav- 
ing left  me.  You  will  fmd  in  him  the  most  touching 
cordiality  of  manner ;  he  is  caressing  and  chivalrous. 
To  him,  every  woman  is  a  Madonna.  One  must  live 
a  long  time  with  him  to  learn  the  secret  of  this  false 
benevolence  and  avoid  the  invisible  dagger  in  his 


146  BEATRIX 

mystifications.  His  air  of  sincerity  would  deceive 
God  himself.  So  you  will  be  taken  in  by  his  cat- 
like ways  and  you  will  never  believe  in  the  profound 
and  rapid  arithmetic  of  his  private  thoughts.  But 
enough  of  him.  I  carried  my  indifference  so  far  as 
to  receive  them  at  my  house.  The  result  was  that 
the  most  keen-sighted  society  on  earth,  Parisian 
society,  had  no  idea  of  the  intrigue.  Although 
Gennaro  was  drunken  with  pride,  he  doubtless  felt 
the  necessity  of  posing  before  Beatrix;  his  dissimu- 
lation was  admirable.  He  surprised  me,  for  I  ex- 
pected to  find  him  demanding  publicity.  The 
marchioness  finally  compromised  herself  after  a 
year  of  happiness  exposed  to  all  the  vicissitudes 
and  hazards  of  Parisian  life.  She  had  not  seen 
Gennaro  for  several  days,  and  I  had  invited  him 
to  dine  with  me;  she  was  to  come  in  the  evening. 
Rochefide  suspected  nothing;  but  Beatrix  knew 
her  husband  so  well,  that,  as  she  often  told  me, 
she  would  have  preferred  the  most  abject  poverty 
to  life  with  that  man  in  case  he  should  acquire  the 
right  to  despise  her  or  torment  her.  I  had  selected 
the  day  of  the  soiree  of  our  friend  the  Comtesse 
de  Montcornet  After  she  had  seen  that  her  hus- 
band's coffee  was  served,  Beatrix  left  the  salon  to 
go  and  dress,  although  she  never  began  her  toilet 
so  early. 

"'Your  hairdresser  hasn't  come,"  observed 
Rochefide,  when  he  learned  the  reason  of  his  wife's 
departure. 

"  'Ther^se  will  dress  my  hair,'  she  replied. 


BEATRIX  147 

"  'But  where  are  you  going,  pray?  You  don't  go 
to  Madame  de  Montcornet's  at  eight  o'clock.' 

"  'No,'  said  she;  'but  1  am  going  to  hear  the  first 
act  at  the  Italiens. ' 

The  inquisitive  bailiff  in  Voltaire's  Huron  is  a 
mute  in  comparison  with  lazy  husbands.  Beatrix 
fled  in  order  to  avoid  further  questioning,  and  did 
not  hear  her  husband's  reply: 

"  'Very  well,  we  will  go  together.' 

"He  had  no  malicious  purpose;  he  had  no  reason 
to  suspect  his  wife,  she  had  so  much  liberty!  He 
exerted  himself  not  to  interfere  with  her  in  any  way, 
as  a  matter  of  self-esteem.  Moreover,  Beatrix's 
conduct  did  not  offer  the  least  pretext  for  the  most 
austere  critic.  The  marquis  was  expecting  to  go 
somewhere  or  other,  to  his  mistress's  perhaps!  He 
had  dressed  before  dinner,  he  had  only  to  take  his 
hat  and  gloves,  when  he  heard  his  wife's  carriage 
rumbling  under  the  awning  at  the  front  door.  He 
went  to  her  room  and  found  her  all  ready,  but 
amazed  beyond  expression  to  see  him. 

"  'Where  are  you  going?*  she  inquired. 

"  'Didn't  I  say  1  would  go  with  you  to  the 
Italiens  ? ' 

"The  marchioness  repressed  any  external  indica- 
tion of  her  intense  annoyance ;  but  her  cheeks  be- 
came as  brilliant  a  red  as  if  she  had  rouged  them. 

"  'Well,  let  us  go,'  said  she. 

"Rochefide  followed  her,  taking  no  heed  of  the 
emotion  betrayed  by  her  voice, — for  she  was  con- 
sumed by  the  most  bitter  wrath. 


148  BEATRIX 

**  *To  the  ItaliensF  said  he. 

***No!*  cried  Beatrix,  *to  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches.  I  have  a  few  words  I  want  to  say  to  her,  * 
she  explained,  when  the  door  was  closed. 

"The  carriage  drove  away. 

*  "If  you  choose,*  said  Beatrix,  'I  will  take  you  to 
the  Italiens  first  and  then  go  on  to  her  house. ' 

"*No,'  the  marquis  replied,  *if  you  have  only  a 
few  words  to  say  to  her,  I  will  wait  in  the  carriage; 
it  is  half-past  seven. ' 

"If  Beatrix  had  said  to  her  husband:  *Go  to  the 
Italiens  and  leave  me  in  peace,'  he  would  have 
obeyed  without  a  word.  Like  every  bright  woman, 
she  was  afraid  of  arousing  his  suspicions  because 
she  was  conscious  of  her  own  guilt,  so  she  sub- 
mitted. When  she  left  the  Italiens  to  come  to  me, 
her  husband  accompanied  her.  She  entered  my 
salon,  crimson  with  anger  and  impatience.  She 
walked  up  to  me  and  whispered  in  my  ear  as  calmly 
as  you  please : 

"  *My  dear  Felicite,  I  shall  start  for  Italy  with 
Conti  to-morrow  evening;  ask  him  to  make  all  the 
arrangements  and  to  come  here  with  a  carriage  and 
passports. ' 

"Then  she  went  away  with  her  husband. 
Violent  passions  will  have  their  liberty  at  any 
price.  Beatrix  had  been  suffering  for  a  year  from 
the  restraint  and  from  the  infrequency  of  their  meet- 
ings; she  looked  upon  herself  as  united  to  Gennaro. 
So  I  was  not  surprised  at  an3rthing.  In  her  place, 
with  my  disposition,  I  would  have  done  the  same. 


BEATRIX  149 

She  determined  upon  this  pronounced  step  because 
her  plans  were  interfered  with  in  the  most  innocent 
way.  She  warded  off  one  catastrophe  by  a  greater 
one.  Conti's  joy  distressed  me,  for  his  vanity 
alone  was  concerned  in  it. 

*'  'That  is  what  1  call  love!'  he  said  in  the  midst 
of  his  exultation.  'How  few  women  would  destroy 
their  lives,  their  fortunes,  their  reputations  in  this 
way! 

"  'Yes,  she  loves  you,*  I  said,  'but  you  don't  love 
her!' 

"He  flew  into  a  rage  and  made  a  scene:  he  de- 
claimed and  stormed  at  me,  descanted  upon  his  love, 
saying  that  he  had  never  believed  it  was  possible 
for  him  to  love  so  deeply.  I  was  unmoved  and 
loaned  him  such  money  as  he  needed  for  the 
journey,  for  he  was  quite  penniless  at  the  time. 
Beatrix  left  a  letter  for  Rochefide,  and  started  for 
Italy  the  next  evening.  She  stayed  there  two 
years ;  she  wrote  me  several  times  and  her  letters 
are  delightful  outpourings  of  affection ;  the  poor  child 
clings  to  me  as  the  only  woman  who  understands 
her.  She  adores  me,  she  says.  The  need  of  money 
compelled  Gennaro  to  write  an  opera,  for  he  did  not 
find  in  Italy  the  means  of  livelihood  open  to  com- 
posers at  Paris.  Here  is  Beatrix's  letter ;  you  can 
understand  it  now,  if  one  can  analyze  the  feelings 
of  the  heart  at  your  age,"  she  said,  handing  him  the 
letter. 

At  that  moment,  Claude  Vignon  entered  the  room. 
That  unexpected  apparition  made  both  Calyste  and 


ISO  BEATRIX 

Felicite  silent  for  a  moment, — she  from  surprise,  he 
from  vague  uneasiness. 

The  high,  broad  forehead  of  this  young  man,  bald 
at  thirty-seven,  seemed  overcast  by  clouds.  His 
firm,  sensible  mouth  wore  an  expression  of  cold 
irony.  Claude  Vignon  is  an  imposing  personage, 
notwithstanding  the  premature  decay  of  a  face  that 
was  once  magnificent  but  is  now  livid.  Between 
the  ages  of  eighteen  and  twenty-five,  he  almost 
resembled  the  divine  Raphael;  but  his  nose,  the 
feature  of  the  human  face  that  changes  most,  is 
sharpened  to  a  point;  his  face  has  settled,  so  to 
speak,  under  the  influence  of  some  mysterious  de- 
pression, its  outlines  have  acquired  a  fulness  of  an 
unpleasant  color,  the  leaden  tones  predominate  in 
the  worn-out  complexion,  but  nobody  knows  the 
causes  of  his  fatigue; — perhaps  he  has  grown  old 
prematurely  as  the  result  of  bitter  loneliness,  of 
abuse  of  his  understanding.  He  searches  others' 
thoughts,  without  purpose  or  system,  the  pickaxe  of 
his  criticism  always  demolishes,  never  builds  up. 
So  his  weariness  is  that  weariness  of  the  mechanic, 
not  of  the  architect  His  eyes,  of  a  pale  blue,  once 
bright  and  sparkling,  have  been  veiled  by  unknown 
suffering  or  dimmed  by  sadness  and  depression. 
Dissipation  has  stamped  a  dark  band  above  the  eye- 
brows. The  temples  have  lost  their  freshness. 
The  chin,  which  once  gave  an  incomparable  air  of 
distinction  to  his  face,  has  grown  double  in  the  most 
plebeian  way.  His  voice,  never  of  great  depth,  has 
grown  weaker ;  it  is  neither  hoarse  nor  extinct,  but 


BEATRIX  151 

is  somewhere  between  hoarseness  and  extinction. 
The  impassibility  of  the  fine  head,  and  the  fixed  stare, 
cover  an  irresolution,  a  weakness  that  is  betrayed 
by  a  light,  mocking  smile.  This  weakness  affects 
his  acts,  not  his  thoughts ;  there  are  traces  of  ency- 
clopaedic understanding  upon  his  brow  and  in  the 
play  of  his  features, — childish  features  and  haughty 
at  the  same  time. 

There  is  one  detail  that  may  explain  the  oddities  of 
his  character.  The  man  is  tall  and  already  slightly 
bent,  like  all  those  who  carry  a  world  of  ideas. 
Such  long  bodies  have  never  been  remarkable  for 
continuous  energy,  for  creative  activity.  Charle- 
magne, Belisarius,  Narses  and  Constantine  are 
noteworthy  exceptions  in  that  respect.  Certainly, 
Claude  Vignon  suggests  mysteries  to  be  divined. 
In  the  first  place,  he  is  very  simple  and  very  shrewd 
at  once.  Although  he  falls  into  excesses  with  the 
facility  of  a  courtesan,  his  mind  remains  untouched. 
That  intellect,  which  is  capable  of  criticizing  the 
arts  and  sciences,  literature,  politics,  is  incapable 
of  managing  his  external  life.  Claude  contemplates 
himself  in  the  light  of  the  extent  of  his  intellectual 
kingdom,  and  abandons  its  form  with  the  indiffer- 
ence of  Diogenes.  Content  to  see  through  and  to 
understand  everything,  he  despises  mere  material- 
ities ;  but,  being  assailed  by  doubt  as  soon  as  he  be- 
gins to  think  of  creating,  he  sees  the  obstacles 
without  being  seduced  by  the  attractions,  and 
wastes  so  much  time  discussing  methods  that  he 
remains  with  his  hands  hanging  at  his  sides  and 


152  BEATRIX 

nothing  comes  of  it  He  is  the  Grand  Turk  of  the 
intellect,  lulled  to  sleep  by  meditation.  Criticism 
is  his  opium  and  his  harem  of  books  written  has 
caused  him  to  turn  with  disgust  from  the  thought 
of  writing  one.  Indifferent  to  the  smallest  as  to 
the  greatest  things,  he  is  compelled,  by  the  very 
weight  of  his  head,  to  fall  into  debauchery,  to 
abdicate  for  some  moments  his  fatal  power  of  om- 
nipotent analysis.  He  is  too  much  engrossed  with 
the  wrong  side  of  genius,  and  you  can  understand 
now  that  Camille  Maupin  might  try  to  set  him 
right 

It  was  a  seductive  task.  Claude  Vignon  deems 
himself  no  less  great  as  a  politician  than  as  a 
writer;  but  that  unpublished  Machiavel  laughs  in 
his  sleeve  at  ambitious  men,  he  knows  all  that  he 
can  do,  he  instinctively  gauges  his  future  by  his 
faculties,  he  imagines  himself  a  great  man,  he  eyes 
the  obstacles,  sees  through  the  folly  of  upstarts, 
takes  alarm  or  is  disgusted,  and  lets  the  time  pass 
without  setting  to  work.  Like  Etienne  Lousteau 
the  writer  of  feuilleions,  like  Nathan  the  famous 
dramatic  author,  like  Blondet,  a  journalist  like  him- 
self, he  came  from  the  bosom  of  the  bourgeoisie,  to 
which  we  owe  the  majority  of  great  writers. 

"How  did  you  come?"  said  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches,  blushing  with  happiness  or  surprise. 

"Through  the  door,"  said  Claude  Vignon,  dryly. 

"Indeed!"  she  cried  with  a  shrug,  "I  am  well 
aware  that  you  are  not  the  man  to  come  in  through 
a  window." 


BEATRIX  153 

"Escalade  is  a  species  of  cross  of  honor  in  the 
eyes  of  the  women  one  loves." 

"Enough,"  said  Felicite. 

"Do  I  disturb  you?"  Vignon  inquired. 

"Monsieur,"  said  the  artless  Calyste,  "this 
letter—" 

"Keep  it,  I  ask  no  questions ;  at  our  age  such  things 
are  understood,"  he  said  mockingly,  interrupting 
Calyste. 

"But,  monsieur — "  the  chevalier  began,  indig- 
nantly. 

"Be  calm,  young  man;  I  am  excessively  indul- 
gent to  real  sentiment — " 

"My  dear  Calyste — "  Camille  began. 

"Dear?"  interposed  Vignon. 

"Claude  is  joking,"  said  Camille,  still  address- 
ing Calyste;  "he  does  wrong  to  joke  with  you  who 
know  nothing  of  Parisian  methods  of  mystification." 

"I  did  not  know  1  was  joking,"  rejoined  Vignon, 
gravely. 

"Which  way  did  you  come?  For  two  hours  I 
have  never  ceased  to  look  in  the  direction  of  Le 
Croisic. " 

"You  did  not  look  all  the  time,"  replied  Vignon. 

"You  are  unbearable  with  your  jesting." 

"I,  jest?" 

Calyste  rose. 

"You  are  not  so  badly  off  here  that  you  need  go," 
said  Vignon. 

"On  the  contrary,"  said  the  youth,  boiling  over 
with  indignation,  as  Camille  gave  him  her  hand. 


154  BEATRIX 

which  he  kissed  instead  of  pressing  it,  leaving  a 
burning  tear  upon  it. 

"I  would  like  to  be  that  boy,"  said  the  critic, 
seating  himself  and  taking  the  end  of  the  hookah. 
"How  he  will  love!" 

"Too  much,  for  he  will  not  be  loved,"  said  Ma- 
demoiselle des  Touches.  "Madame  de  Rochefide  is 
coming  here." 

"Aha !"  Claude  exclaimed.     "With  Conti  ?" 

"He  is  coming  with  her,  but  she  will  remain 
after  he  has  left" 

"Has  there  been  any  trouble?" 

"No." 

"Play  me  one  of  Beethoven's  sonatas;  I  know 
nothing  of  the  music  he  has  written  for  the  piano." 

Claude  set  about  filling  the  bowl  of  the  hookah 
with  Turkish  tobacco,  scrutinizing  Camille  much 
more  closely  than  she  had  any  idea  of;  a  horrible 
thought  filled  his  mind — he  believed  that  a  loyal 
woman  had  undertaken  to  make  a  dupe  of  him.  It 
was  a  novel  situation. 


Calyste,  as  he  took  his  leave,  was  not  thinking 
of  Beatrix  de  Rochefide  or  her  letter ;  he  was  furi- 
ously angry  with  Claude  Vignon,  he  raged  inwardly 
over  what  he  took  for  indelicacy,  he  pitied  poor 
Felicite.  How  could  a  man  be  loved  by  that  sub- 
lime creature  and  not  worship  her  on  his  knees,  not 
believe  her  on  the  faith  of  a  glance  or  a  smile? 
After  he  had  been  privileged  to  witness  the  agony 
of  suspense  Camille  suffered  and  had  seen  her  face 
turned  always  toward  Le  Croisic,  he  had  longed  to 
tear  that  pale,  cold  spectre  to  pieces,  having  no  con- 
ception, as  Felicite  had  told  him,  of  the  mystifica- 
tions of  thought  in  which  the  mocking  spirits  of  the 
press  excel.     To  him,  love  was  a  human  religion. 

When  his  mother  saw  him  in  the  courtyard,  she 
could  not  restrain  a  joyful  cry,  and  old  Mademoiselle 
de  Guenic  at  once  whistled  for  Mariotte. 

"Mariotte,  here's  the  child,  put  on  the  fish." 

**1  saw  him,  mademoiselle,"  was  the  cook's  reply. 

The  mother,  somewhat  disturbed  by  the  melan- 
choly that  sat  enthroned  upon  Calyste's  brow,  hav- 
ing no  suspicion  that  it  was  caused  by  Vignon's 
pretended  unkind  treatment  of  Felicite,  sat  down  at 
her  embroidery.  The  old  aunt  took  her  knitting. 
The  baron  gave  his  son  his  easy-chair  and  walked 
up  and  down  the  hall  as  if  to  limber  up  his  legs  be- 
fore going  to  take  a  turn  in  the  garden.  Never  did 
(155) 


156  BEATRIX 

the  brush  of  Dutch  or  Flemish  painter  represent  so 
dark  an  interior,  peopled  with  figures  so  harmoni- 
ously blended.  The  comely  youth  in  black  velvet, 
the  mother  still  so  lovely,  and  the  two  old  people, 
with  that  old-fashioned  apartment  as  a  frame,  ex- 
pressed the  most  touching  domestic  harmony. 

Fanny  would  have  liked  to  question  Calyste;  but 
he  had  taken  from  his  pocket  the  letter  from  Beatrix, 
who  was  perhaps  destined  to  wreck  the  happiness 
of  that  noble  family.  As  he  unfolded  it,  Calyste's 
vivid  imagination  showed  him  the  marchioness 
dressed  as  Camille  Maupin  had  fancifully  described 
her. 

LETTER  FROM  BEATRIX  TO  Fe'lICITE. 

"Genoa,  July  2. 
**I  have  not  written  you  since  our  stay  at  Flor- 
ence, my  dear;  but  Venice  and  Rome  absorbed  my 
time,  and,  you  know,  pleasure  fills  a  great  place  in 
life.  Neither  of  us  has  reached  a  point  where  our 
happiness  depends  upon  one  letter  more  or  less.  I 
am  a  little  tired.  I  wanted  to  see  everything  and 
when  one's  mind  is  not  easily  satiated,  the  constant 
repetition  of  one's  pleasures  causes  weariness. 
Our  friend  has  had  notable  triumphs  at  La  Scala 
and  La  Fenice,  and  these  last  days  at  Saint-Charles. 
Three  Italian  operas  in  two  years !  you  won't  say 
that  love  makes  him  lazy.  We  have  had  a  mar- 
velous reception  everywhere,  but  I  should  have 
preferred  silence  and  solitude.     Is  not  that  the  only 


BEATRIX  157 

manner  of  life  suitable  to  women  who  are  directly 
at  odds  with  society?  I  thought  it  would  be  so. 
Love,  my  dear,  is  a  more  exacting  master  than  mar- 
riage ;  but  it  is  so  sweet  to  obey  him !  After  play- 
ing at  love  all  my  life,  I  did  not  know  that  it  would 
be  necessary  to  see  society  again,  even  by  snatches, 
and  the  attentions  lavished  upon  me  were  so  many 
wounds.  I  was  no  longer  on  a  footing  of  equality 
with  the  most  intellectual  women.  The  greater  the 
consideration  shown  me,  the  more  evident  my  infe- 
riority became.  Gennaro  did  not  understand  these 
refinements,  but  he  was  so  happy  that  it  would 
have  been  very  ungracious  in  me  not  to  sacrifice 
my  petty  vanity  to  such  a  magnificent  thing  as  the 
life  of  an  artist.  We  women  exist  only  by  love, 
while  men  live  by  love  and  by  action;  otherwise 
they  would  not  be  men.  But  we  married  women 
suffer  a  great  disadvantage  in  such  positions  as  I 
now  occupy,  whereas  you  escaped  it;  you  remained 
great  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  which  had  no  rights 
over  you;  you  had  your  independence,  and  I  have 
surrendered  mine.  I  speak  of  this  only  in  connec- 
tion with  those  things  that  concern  the  heart,  and 
without  regard  to  social  matters,  which  I  have 
thrown  overboard  altogether.  You  could  be  a  flirt 
and  headstrong,  and  could  retain  all  the  attractions 
of  the  woman  who  loves  and  can  grant  or  refuse 
everything  at  her  pleasure ;  you  had  retained  the 
privilege  of  being  capricious,  even  in  the  interest  of 
your  love  and  of  the  man  who  caught  your  fancy. 
Lastly,  you  have  your  own  approbation  to-day;  I 


158  BEATRIX 

no  longer  have  that  liberty  of  the  heart  which  I 
find  it  delightful  to  exercise  in  love,  even  when  the 
passion  is  everlasting.  I  have  not  the  right  to 
quarrel  with  a  laughing  face,  which  we  prize  so 
highly  and  with  so  good  reason ;  is  it  not  the  probe 
with  which  we  question  the  heart?  1  can  make  no 
threats,  I  must  derive  all  my  attractions  from  un- 
limited obedience  and  meekness,  1  must  make  an 
impression  by  the  grandeur  of  my  love;  1  would 
rather  die  than  leave  Gennaro,  for  my  hope  of 
pardon  is  in  the  sanctity  of  my  passion.  Between 
the  dignity  of  society  and  my  poor  little  dignity, 
which  is  a  secret  to  my  conscience,  I  did  not  hesi- 
tate. If  I  have  now  and  then  fits  of  melancholy  like 
the  clouds  that  pass  over  the  clearest  sky,  of  the 
sort  to  which  we  women  love  to  abandon  ourselves, 
I  say  nothing  about  them,  they  resemble  regrets. 
Mon  Dieu!  1  am  so  thoroughly  conscious  of  the 
extent  of  my  obligations,  that  1  have  armed  myself 
with  entire  indulgence;  but,  up  to  the  present  time, 
Gennaro  has  never  alarmed  my  sensitive  jealousy. 
Indeed  1  do  not  know  in  what  respect  my  dear, 
beautiful  genius  can  be  found  lacking.  My  angel, 
I  am  a  little  like  the  devotees  that  argue  with  their 
God,  for  do  I  not  owe  my  happiness  to  you  ?  And 
that  being  so,  can  you  doubt  that  I  often  think  of 
you?  I  have  seen  Italy,  at  all  events!  seen  it  as 
you  saw  it,  as  everyone  should  see  it,  illumined  in 
our  hearts  by  love,  as  it  is  by  its  beautiful  sun- 
light and  its  chefs-d'oeuvre.  I  pity  those  who  are 
profoundly  moved  by  the  adoration  it  demands  at 


BEATRIX  159 

every  step,  if  they  have  not  a  hand  to  press,  a  heart 
in  which  to  pour  the  overflow  of  the  emotions  which 
grow  calm  there  even  while  they  increase  in  in- 
tensity. These  two  years  are,  so  far  as  I  am  con- 
cerned, my  whole  life,  and  my  memory  will  reap 
rich  harvests  there.  Did  you  never,  as  I  have  done, 
plan  to  live  at  Chiavari,  to  buy  a  palace  at  Venice,  a 
country  house  at  Sorrento,  a  villa  at  Florence.?  Do 
not  all  loving  women  dread  society.?  And  should 
not  I,  who  am  cast  out  of  it  forever,  long  to  bury 
myself  in  some  lovely  countryside,  among  heaps  of 
flowers,  on  the  shore  of  a  pretty  lake  or  in  a  valley 
as  pretty  as  any  lake,  like  the  one  we  see  from 
Fiesole.?  But  alas!  we  are  poor  artists,  and  the 
need  of  money  brings  the  two  wanderers  back  to 
Paris.  Gennaro  doesn't  want  me  to  notice  any 
change  in  our  mode  of  life,  so  he  is  coming  to  Paris 
to  attend  the  rehearsals  of  a  new  work,  a  grand 
opera.  You  understand,  as  well  as  I  do  myself, 
my  lovely  angel,  that  I  cannot  set  foot  in  Paris.  At 
the  price  of  my  love,  I  would  not  meet  one  of  the 
glances  from  man  or  woman  that  would  make  me 
think  of  murder.  Yes,  I  would  cut  in  pieces  any- 
one who  honored  me  with  his  pity  or  undertook  to 
shield  me  with  his  favor — like  that  adorable  Ch^- 
teauneuf,  who,  under  Henri  III.  I  think,  drove  spurs 
into  his  horse  and  rode  down  the  Provost  of  Paris 
for  a  crime  of  that  sort  1  write  you  therefore  to 
say  that  I  shall  soon  join  you  at  Les  Touches,  and 
await  our  Gennaro  in  that  charming  retreat  You 
see  how  forward  1  am  with  my  benefactress  and 


l60  BEATRIX 

sister!  But  the  greatness  of  my  obligations  will 
not  lead  me,  as  it  does  some  people,  to  ingratitude. 
You  have  said  so  much  to  me  about  the  difficulties  of 
the  journey  that  I  shall  try  to  reach  Le  Croisic  by 
water.  That  idea  occurred  to  me  when  I  learned 
here  that  there  was  a  small  Danish  vessel  already 
laden  with  marble,  which  is  going  there  to  get  salt 
on  its  return  to  the  Baltic.  In  this  way,  I  avoid  the 
expense  and  fatigue  of  the  journey  by  post.  I  know 
that  you  are  not  alone  and  I  am  very  glad  of  it;  1 
had  some  remorse  in  the  midst  of  my  felicity.  You 
are  the  only  person  with  whom  I  could  endure  to  be 
alone  without  Conti.  Will  it  not  also  be  a  pleasure 
to  you  to  have  with  you  a  woman  who  will  under- 
stand your  happiness  without  being  jealous  of  it? 
Well,  we  shall  meet  soon.  The  wind  is  favorable 
and  I  am  off,  sending  you  a  kiss." 

"Ah!  well,  she  loves  too,"  said  Calyste,  refold- 
ing the  letter  with  a  melancholy  air. 

His  sadness  shed  a  bright  light  upon  his  mother's 
heart,  as  a  flash  of  lightning  might  light  up  a  dark 
abyss.  The  baron  had  gone  out  Fanny  bolted 
the  door  in  the  turret,  and  resumed  her  position  at 
the  back  of  the  chair  in  which  her  son  was  sitting, 
like  Dido's  sister  in  Guerin's  picture;  she  kissed 
him  on  the  forehead,  as  she  said : 

"What  is  it,  dear  Calyste?  what  makes  you  sad? 
You  promised  to  explain  your  assiduous  visits  to 
Les  Touches ;  I  would  bless  its  mistress,  you  said, 
did  you  not?" 


BEATRIX  l6l 

*'Yes,  most  certainly,"  said  he;  "she  has  proved 
to  me,  my  darling  mother,  the  insufficiency  of  my 
education,  at  a  time  when  the  nobles  ought  to  win 
some  personal  renown  to  restore  life  to  their  names. 
1  was  as  far  from  the  age  I  live  in  as  Guerande  is 
from  Paris.  She  has  been,  in  a  certain  sense,  the 
mother  of  my  intellect" 

"I  shall  not  bless  her  for  that, "  said  the  baroness, 
her  eyes  filling  with  tears. 

"Mamma,"  cried  Calyste,  as  the  hot  tears  fell 
upon  his  brow,  pearls  of  sorrowing  maternity! 
"don't  weep,  mamma,  for  I  offered  a  little  while 
ago,  in  order  to  do  her  a  service,  to  scour  the 
country  from  the  custom-house  outlook  to  the  vil- 
lage of  Batz,  and  she  said:  'How  anxious  your 
mother  would  be !'  " 

"She  said  that?  Then  I  can  forgive  her  much," 
said  Fanny. 

"Felicite  seeks  nothing  but  my  good,"  continued 
Calyste:  "she  often  keeps  back  lively,  question- 
able words  that  sometimes  slip  from  an  artist,  in 
order  not  to  shake  my  faith,  for  she  doesn't  know 
that  it  cannot  be  shaken.  She  has  described  to  me 
the  lives  led  at  Paris  by  some  young  men  of  the 
oldest  nobility,  who  have  gone  there  from  their  prov- 
ince, as  I  may  go,  leaving  a  family  without  for- 
tune, and  winning  a  great  fortune  there,  by  the 
power  of  their  will  and  their  intellect  I  can  do 
what  the  Baron  de  Rastignac  did,  who  is  in  the 
ministry  to-day.  She  gives  me  lessons  on  the 
piano,  she  teaches  me  Italian,  she  has  initiated  me 
II 


162  BEATRIX 

into  a  thousand  social  secrets  that  no  one  in  Gu6- 
rande  suspects.  She  could  not  give  me  the  treasures 
of  love,  so  she  gives  me  those  of  her  vast  intellect, 
her  wit,  her  genius.  She  does  not  seek  to  be  a 
pleasure,  but  a  source  of  information  to  me;  she 
offends  none  of  my  religious  ideas;  she  has  faith  in 
the  nobility,  she  loves  Bretagne,  she — " 

"She  has  changed  our  Calyste, "  interposed  the  old 
blind  woman,  "for  1  can't  understand  what  he  says. 
You  have  a  house  filled  with  old  relations  who  adore 
you,  my  fine  nephew,  and  with  honest  old  servants ; 
you  can  marry  some  pretty  little  Breton  maiden, 
religiously  brought  up,  who  will  make  you  happy, 
and  you  can  reserve  your  ambition  for  your  oldest 
son,  who  will  be  three  times  richer  than  you  are  if 
you  can  be  content  to  live  quietly,  economically,  in 
the  shadow  in  the  peace  of  the  Lord,  in  order  to  set 
free  our  family  estates.  It  is  as  simple  as  the  heart 
of  a  Breton.  You  will  become  a  rich  nobleman,  not 
so  quickly,  but  more  solidly." 

"Your  aunt  is  right,  my  angel,  she  is  as  solicitous 
for  your  happiness  as  1  am  myself.  If  1  do  not  suc- 
ceed in  arranging  a  marriage  for  you  with  Margaret, 
your  uncle  Lord  Fitzwilliam's  daughter,  it  is  almost 
certain  that  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  will  give  her 
property  to  whichever  one  of  her  nieces  you  will 
promise  to  cherish." 

"You  will  find  a  few  crowns  here,  too,"  said 
the  old  aunt  in  a  low  voice  and  with  a  mysteri- 
ous air. 

"Marry  at  my  age?"  said  he,  bestowing  upon  his 


BEATRIX  163 

mother  one  of  those  glances  which  put  maternal 
logic  to  flight. 

"Am  I  to  have  no  mad,  delightful  love-affairs? 
Shall  I  not  tremble,  palpitate,  fear,  gasp  and  lie 
beneath  inexorable  glances  and  move  them  to  pity  ? 
Must  I  know  nothing  of  untrammeled  beauty,  the 
caprices  of  the  heart,  the  clouds  that  float  beneath 
the  azure  sky  of  happiness  and  are  dissipated  by 
the  breath  of  pleasure?  Shall  1  not  walk  along  the 
winding  paths,  wet  with  dew?  Shall  I  not  stand 
under  a  gutter-spout,  not  knowing  that  it  rains,  like 
the  lovers  Diderot  saw?  Shall  1  not  take  a  red-hot 
coal  in  the  palm  of  my  hand  like  the  Due  de  Lor- 
raine? Shall  I  not  with  silken  ladders  scale  walls? 
shall  I  not  hang  from  an  old  decayed  trellis  without 
making  it  bend  ?  shall  I  not  hide  myself  in  a  ward- 
robe or  beneath  a  bed?  Shall  I  know  nothing  of 
woman  but  conjugal  submission,  nothing  of  love  but 
the  placid  flame  of  his  lamp?  Is  my  curiosity  to  be 
satisfied  before  it  is  aroused?  Must  I  pass  my  life 
without  experiencing  those  passions  of  the  heart 
that  .exalt  man's  power?  Must  I  be  a  conjugal 
monk?  No!  I  have  tasted  of  the  apple  of  Parisian 
civilization.  Do  you  not  see  that,  by  confining  me 
within  the  chaste,  ignorant  limits  of  family  life, 
you  lighted  the  fire  that  is  consuming  me,  and  that 
I  should  have  wasted  my  life  without  having  adored 
the  divinity  which  I  see  everywhere,  in  the  green 
foliage  as  in  the  sands  illumined  by  the  sun,  and  in 
all  the  lovely,  noble,  refined  women  depicted  in  the 
books  and  poems  I  have  devoured  at  Camille's  house  ? 


l64  BEATRIX 

Alas !  there  is  but  one  of  such  women  at  Guerande, 
and  you  are  she,  dear  mother !  The  lovely  blue  birds 
of  my  dreams  come  from  Paris,  or  from  the  pages  of 
Lord  Byron  and  Scott:  Parisina,  Effie,  Minna!  And 
one  of  them  was  the  royal  duchess  whom  I  saw  on 
the  moors,  through  the  furze  and  the  genista,  at  sight 
of  whom  all  the  blood  rushed  to  my  heart!" 

The  baroness  saw  these  thoughts  more  clearly,  in 
a  brighter,  more  vivid  light  than  the  printer's  art 
makes  possible  to  him  who  reads  them  here;  she 
caught  them  all  as  they  fell  from  that  swift  glance 
like  arnJws  falling  from  an  overturned  quiver. 
Although  she  had  never  read  Beaumarchais,  she 
thought,  with  all  women,  that  it  would  be  a  crime 
to  force  marriage  upon  this  Cherubin. 

*'Oh!  my  dear  child,"  she  said,  taking  him  in 
her  arms,  hugging  him  and  kissing  his  lovely  hair, 
which  was  still  hers;  "marry  when  you  choose,  but 
be  happy!    It  is  my  duty  not  to  annoy  you." 

Mariotte  came  in  to  set  the  table.  Gasselin  had 
gone  out  to  exercise  Calyste's  horse,  which  its 
master  had  not  ridden  for  two  months.  The  three 
women,  the  mother,  the  aunt  and  Mariotte,  with  the 
natural  cunning  of  their  sex,  were  in  league  to  lion- 
ize Calyste  when  he  dined  at  home.  Breton 
poverty,  armed  with  the  memories  and  habits  of 
childhood,  attempted  to  contend  with  the  Parisian 
civilization  so  adequately  represented  at  Les 
Touches,  within  two  steps  of  Guerande.  Mariotte 
tried  to  disgust  her  young  master  with  the  scientific- 
ally compounded   dishes    from    Camille   Maupin's 


BEATRIX  165 

kitchen,  as  his  mother  and  aunt  outdid  each  other 
in  their  efforts  to  immesh  their  child  in  the  network 
of  their  affection  and  put  all  comparison  out  of  the 
question. 

"There!  you  have  a  lubine" — a  sort  of  barbel, — 
"Monsieur  Calyste,  and  snipe,  and  such  pancakes  as 
you  can't  get  anywhere  else,"  said  Mariotte  with  a 
sly,  triumphant  air,  viewing  herself  in  the  white 
tablecloth,  a  veritable  sheet  of  snow. 

After  dinner,  when  his  old  aunt  had  resumed  her 
knitting  and  the  cure  of  Guerande  and  the«Gheva- 
lier  du  Halga  arrived,  allured  by  the  prospective 
game  of  mouche,  Calyste  set  out  for  Les  Touches 
once  more,  on  the  plea  that  he  must  return  Beatrix's 
letter. 

Claude  Vignon  and  Mademoiselle  des  Touches 
were  still  at  table.  The  great  critic  had  a  tendency 
to  gluttony,  and  he  was  encouraged  in  that  vice  by 
Felicite,  who  knew  how  indispensable  a  woman 
may  make  herself  by  complaisance  in  such  matters. 
The  dining-room,  to  which  important  additions  had 
been  made  within  a  month,  showed  with  what 
facility  and  promptitude  a  woman  will  adapt  herself 
to  the  character,  the  profession,  the  passions  and 
the  tastes  of  the  man  she  loves  or  desires  to  love. 
The  table  presented  the  sumptuous,  brilliant  appear- 
ance which  modern  luxury  has  imparted  to  the 
methods  of  service,  assisted  by  the  developments  of 
mechanical  industry. 

The  poor  but  noble  house  of  Du  Guenic  knew  not 
with  what  an  adversary  it  had  to  deal,  nor  how 


l66  BEATRIX 

great  a  fortune  was  necessary  to  enter  the  lists 
against  the  silver  plate,  remodeled  at  Paris  and 
brought  thence  by  Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  the 
porcelain,  considered  good  enough  for  the  country, 
the  fine  linen,  the  silver-gilt  utensils,  the  table 
ornaments,  and  the  science  of  Felicite's  cook. 

Calyste  refused  to  partake  of  any  of  the  liqueurs 
contained  in  one  of  the  mdLgnificent  cabarets  of  costly 
wood,  which  resemble  tabernacles. 

"Here  is  your  letter,"  he  said  with  innocent 
ostentation,  glancing  at  Claude,  who  was  sipping  a 
glass  of  curafoa. 

"Well,  what  do  you  think  of  it.?"  queried  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches,  tossing  the  letter  across  the 
table  to  Vignon,  who  began  to  read  it,  taking  up 
and  putting  down  his  little  glass  at  intervals. 

"Why — that  the  women  in  Paris  are  very  for- 
tunate; they  all  have  men  of  genius  to  worship, 
men  who  love  them." 

"Ah!  you  haven't  left  your  village  yet,"  said 
Felicite  with  a  laugh.  "What!  did  you  not  see 
that  she  already  loves  him  less,  and  that — " 

"That  is  very  clear,"  said  Claude  Vignon,  who 
had  read  only  the  first  page.  "Does  a  woman  ever 
take  any  heed  of  her  position  when  she  is  really  in 
love  ?  is  she  as  subtle  a  reasoner  as  the  marchioness  ? 
does  she  count  the  chances  ?  does  she  make  fine  dis- 
tinctions.? Dear  Beatrix  is  attached  to  Conti  by 
pride,  she  is  doomed,  as  it  were,  to  love  him." 

"Poor  woman!"  said  Camille. 

Calyste's  eyes  were  fixed  on  the  table,  but  he  no 


BEATRIX  167 

longer  saw  anything.  The  lovely  woman  in  the  fan- 
ciful costume  sketched  by  Felicitethat  morning  had 
appeared  to  him  in  a  flood  of  light ;  she  smiled  at  him 
and  waved  her  fan;  and  the  other  hand,  emerging 
from  a  sleeve  of  lace  and  cherry  velvet,  fell  white 
and  pure  upon  the  swelling  folds  of  her  superb  gown. 

"That  will  be  your  chance,"  said  Claude  Vignon 
to  Calyste,  with  a  sardonic  smile. 

Calyste  was  wounded  at  the  word  chance. 

"Don't  put  the  idea  of  such  an  intrigue  in  the 
poor  child's  head;  you  don't  know  how  dangerous 
these  jests  are.  1  know  Beatrix;  she  has  too  much 
grandeur  in  her  character  to  change,  and  Conti  will 
be  here,  you  know." 

"Aha!"  said  Claude  Vignon  mockingly,  "a  little 
thrill  of  jealousy?" 

"Do  you  think  so?'*  said  Cam i lie,  proudly. 

"Your  sight  is  keener  than  a  mother's  would  be," 
was  the  reply. 

"But  would  that  be  possible?"  said  Camille, 
pointing  to  Calyste. 

"At  all  events,  they  would  be  a  well-assorted 
couple,"  said  Vignon.  "She  is  ten  years  older  than 
he,  and  he  seems  more  like  the  girl." 

"A  girl,  monsieur,  who  has  already  been  under 
fire  twice  in  La  Vendee.  If  there  had  only  been 
twenty  thousand  girls  of  the  same  sort — " 

"I  was  praising  you,"  said  Vignon,  "which  is  a 
much  easier  task  than  shaving  you." 

"I  have  a  sword  that  shaves  those  whose  beards 
are  too  long,"  Calyste  retorted. 


l68  BEATRIX 

"And  I  am  very  good  at  making  epigrams,"  said 
Vignon  with  a  smile;  "we  are  Frenchmen,  the  mat- 
ter can  be  arranged." 

Mademoiselle  des  Touches  cast  a  pleading  glance 
at  Calyste,  which  calmed  him  instantly. 

"Why  is  it,"  said  she,  to  put  an  end  to  the  dis- 
pute, "that  young  men  like  my  Calyste  always  be- 
gin by  loving  women  much  older  than  themselves?" 

"I  know  of  no  sentiment  more  artless  or  more 
noble,"  Vignon  replied;  "it  is  the  result  of  the  ador- 
able qualities  of  youth.  Moreover,  how  would  old 
women  end  their  days  without  their  love  ?  You  are 
young  and  beautiful  and  will  be  for  twenty  years  to 
come,  so  I  can  speak  plainly  before  you,"  he  added, 
with  a  significant  glance  at  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches.  "In  the  first  place,  the  semi-dowagers  to 
whom  young  men  address  themselves  know  how  to 
love  better  than  young  women.  An  adolescent  youth 
is  too  much  like  a  young  woman  for  a  young  woman 
to  attract  him.  Such  a  passion  conflicts  with  the 
fable  of  Narcissus.  Besides  this  repugnance,  there 
is  between  them,  it  seems  to  me,  a  mutual  lack  of 
experience  which  tends  to  separate  them.  Thus 
the  reason  that  the  hearts  of  young  women  can 
be  understood  only  by  men  whose  adroitness  is 
hidden  behind  a  real  or  pretended  passion,  is  the 
same,  aside  from  the  difference  in  the  calibre  of  the 
minds  concerned,  as  that  which  makes  women  of  a 
certain  age  more  likely  to  fascinate  a  boy:  he  has  a 
delicious  feeling  that  his  suit  will  be  successful,  and 
the  woman's  vanity  is  deliciously  flattered  by  his 


BEATRIX  169 

suit  It  is  very  natural  also  for  youth  to  pounce 
upon  fruits,  and  the  autumn  of  a  woman's  life  pre- 
sents some  that  are  very  luscious  and  sweet-savored. 
And  do  those  glances,  bold  and  reserved  at  once, 
languishing  at  the  proper  moment,  dipped  in  the 
last  rays  of  love,  and  so  warm  and  soft  withal — do 
they  count  for  nothing?  The  cunning  refinement 
of  speech,  the  magnificent  golden  shoulders  so 
superbly  developed,  the  rounded  outlines,  the  grace- 
ful, undulating  sweep  of  the  portly  figure,  the 
dimpled  hands,  the  smooth,  unwrinkled  skin,  the 
forehead  overflowing  with  sentiment,  glowing  in  the 
light,  the  hair  so  carefully  arranged  and  dressed, 
with  narrow  partings  of  white  flesh  artistically  re- 
vealed, and  the  neck,  with  its  superb  folds,  the 
alluring  neck,  where  all  the  resources  of  art  are  dis- 
played to  bring  out  the  contrast  between  the  hair 
and  the  flesh  tones,  to  place  in  bold  relief  all  the 
insolent  assurance  of  life  and  love — what  of  all 
these?  The  brunettes  themselves  at  such  times 
take  on  the  complexion  of  a  blonde,  the  amber  hue 
of  maturity.  And  then  such  women  reveal  in  their 
smiles  and  unfold  in  their  words,  their  knowledge  of 
the  world;  they  know  how  to  talk,  they  betray  so- 
ciety to  you  in  its  entirety  to  make  you  smile,  they 
have  moments  of  sublime  dignity  and  pride,  they 
utter  shrieks  of  despair  fit  to  rend  the  heart,  fare- 
wells to  love,  which  they  can  readily  make  of  no 
effect  and  which  serve  to  rekindle  passion ;  they  be- 
come young  again  by  giving  a  different  look  to  the 
most  desperately  simple  things;  they  compel  you 


I70  BEATRIX 

to  raise  them  again  and  again  after  proclaiming 
their  defeat  with  subtle  coquetry,  and  the  intoxica- 
tion is  contagious;  their  devotion  is  absolute:  they 
listen  to  you,  they  love  you,  they  cling  to  their  love 
as  the  condemned  man  clings  to  the  most  trivial  de- 
tails of  life;  they  resemble  those  lawyers  who  use 
all  sorts  of  arguments  in  their  causes  without  weary- 
ing the  court,  they  employ  all  their  resources — in  a 
word,  we  know  nothing  of  absolute  love  except 
through  them.  I  do  not  think  that  one  can  ever  for- 
get them,  any  more  than  one  forgets  anything  that 
is  great  or  sublime.  A  young  woman  has  a  thou- 
sand distractions,  these  women  have  none ;  they  no 
longer  possess  self-esteem  or  vanity  or  fondness  for 
trifles;  then  love  is  like  the  Loire  at  its  mouth;  it 
is  immense,  it  is  increased  by  all  the  delusions,  all 
the  tributaries  of  life,  and  that  is  why — my  child  is 
silent,"  he  said,  observing  the  ecstatic  attitude  of 
Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  who  was  pressing  Ca- 
lyste's  hand  convulsively,  perhaps  to  thank  him 
for  having  been  the  cause  of  such  a  moment,  of  a 
eulogy  so  high-flown  that  she  could  detect  no  snare 
therein. 

During  the  remainder  of  the  evening,  Claude 
Vignon  and  Felicite  fairly  sparkled  with  wit,  relat- 
ing anecdotes  and  describing  Parisian  society  to 
Calyste,  who  fell  in  love  with  Claude,  for  the  mind 
exerts  its  fascinations  with  especial  force  upon  peo- 
ple of  heart 

"1  should  not  be  surprised  to  see  the  Marquise 
de   Rochefide   and    Conti   make  their   appearance 


BEATRIX  171 

to-morrow;  of  course  he  is  with  her,"  said  Claude 
toward  the  end  of  the  evening.  *'When  I  left  Le 
Croisic,  the  sailors  had  sighted  a  small  Danish, 
Swedish  or  Norwegian  vessel." 

The  words  brought  a  flush  to  the  cheeks  of  the 
impassive  Camille. 

That  night  Madame  du  Guenic  waited  again  for 
her  son  until  one  o'clock,  quite  unable  to  under- 
stand what  he  was  doing  at  Les  Touches  asFelicite 
did  not  love  him. 

"Why,  he  must  be  in  their  way,"  said  this 
adorable  mother  to  herself. — "Pray,  what  did 
you  find  to  say  all  this  time?"  she  asked  when  he 
came  in. 

"Oh!  mother,  I  never  passed  a  more  delightful 
evening.  Genius  is  a  great,  a  sublime  thing. 
Why  didn't  you  give  me  genius?  With  genius  you 
can  choose  the  woman  you  love  best  and  she  is 
yours  whether  she  will  or  no." 

"But  you  are  handsome,  my  own  Calyste." 

"Beauty  is  well  placed  only  with  you  women. 
Besides,  Claude  Vignon  is  handsome,  too.  Men 
of  genius  have  luminous  brows,  eyes  that  flash 
fire;  and  I,  poor  wretch,  can  do  nothing  but 
love." 

"They  say  that  that  is  enough,  my  angel,"  said 
she,  kissing  him  on  the  forehead. 

"Really?" 

"So  I  have  been  told,  I  never  made  the  trial." 

It  was  Calyste's  turn  to  kiss  his  mother's  hand 
reverentially. 


172  BEATRIX 

"I  will  love  you  for  all  those  who  would  have 
worshiped  you,"  he  said. 

"Dear  boy!  it  is  your  duty  perhaps,  for  you 
have  inherited  all  my  feelings.  Pray  do  not  be  im- 
prudent; try  to  love  none  but  noble  women,  if  you 
must  love." 


What  young  man,  filled  with  overflowing  but  re- 
strained vitality,  would  not  have  had  the  brilliant 
idea  of  going  to  Le  Croisic  to  watch  Madame  de 
Rochefide's  debarkation,  in  order  to  catch  a  glimpse 
of  her,  himself  unseen  ?  Calyste  surprised  his  father 
and  mother  beyond  measure,  as  they  knew  nothing 
of  the  fair  marchioness's  expected  arrival,  by  start- 
ing off  in  the  morning  without  waiting  for  his 
breakfast 

God  knows  with  what  agility  the  young  Breton 
lifted  his  feet!  It  seemed  as  if  a  mysterious  power 
were  assisting  him;  he  felt  as  light  as  air  as  he 
glided  along  close  to  the  walls  of  Les  Touches  in 
order  to  avoid  being  seen.  The  adorable  child  was 
ashamed  of  his  ardor,  and  had  a  horrible  fear,  per- 
chance, of  being  made  fun  of:  Felicite  and  Claude 
Vignon  were  so  sharp!  In  such  circumstances, 
moreover,  young  men  believe  that  their  foreheads 
are  transparent. 

He  followed  the  windings  of  the  road  through  the 
labyrinth  of  the  salt  marshes,  reached  the  sands  and 
crossed  them  almost  at  one  bound,  notwithstanding 
the  fierce  heat  of  the  sun.  He  reached  the  steep 
bank,  strengthened  by  a  sea  wall,  at  the  foot  of 
which  is  a  house  where  travelers  can  find  shelter 
from  the  sea-breezes,  storms,  hurricanes  and  rain. 
It  is  not  always  possible  to  cross  the  little  arm  of 
(173) 


174  BEATRIX 

the  sea,  for  boats  are  not  always  at  hand;  and 
while  they  are  coming  across  from  the  town  it  is 
often  advisable  to  keep  the  horses,  asses,  freight 
or  passengers'  luggage  under  cover. 

From  that  point  the  town  of  Le  Croisic  can  be 
seen  and  the  open  sea  beyond.  Calyste  soon  saw 
two  boats  approaching,  filled  with  effects  of  various 
kinds,  bundles,  boxes,  carpet  bags  and  chests, 
whose  shape  and  appearance  announced  to  the 
native,  mysterious  articles  within,  which  could  be- 
long only  to  travelers  of  distinction.  In  one  of  the 
boats  was  a  young  woman  with  a  straw  hat  and  a 
green  veil,  accompanied  by  a  man.  Calyste  felt  a 
thrill  of  excitement;  but  from  their  appearance  he 
soon  realized  that  they  were  a  servant  and  a  lady's 
maid ;  he  dared  not  question  them. 

"Are  you  going  to  Le  Croisic,  Monsieur 
Calyste?"  asked  the  boatmen,  who  knew  him;  he 
replied  with  a  shake  of  the  head,  decidedly  abashed 
at  having  been  called  by  name. 

Calyste  was  overjoyed  at  the  sight  of  a  chest 
covered  with  tarred  canvas,  upon  which  he  read  the 
words:  MADAME  LA  MARQUISE  DE  ROCHEFIDE. 
That  name  glistened  before  his  eyes  like  a  talis- 
man; he  had  an  indefinable  feeling  that  the  hand 
of  fate  was  in  it;  he  knew,  but  without  suspecting 
that  he  knew,  that  he  should  love  that  woman;  the 
most  trifling  things  connected  with  her  interested 
him  even  now,  and  aroused  his  curiosity.  Why.? 
In  the  scorching  desert  of  its  limitless,  aimless 
desires,  does  not  youth  expend  all  its  strength  upon 


BEATRIX  175 

the  first  woman  who  appears  ?  Beatrix  had  inher- 
ited the  love  Camille  disdained. 

Calyste  watched  the  debarkation,  glancing  from 
time  to  time  toward  Le  Croisic,  hoping  to  see  a  boat 
put  out  from  the  town  and  steer  for  the  little  pro- 
montory where  the  sea  was  moaning,  and  reveal  to 
him  the  Beatrix  who  had  already  become  in  his 
thoughts  what  Beatrice  was  to  Dante,  an  imperish- 
able marble  statue,  on  whose  hands  he  would  hang 
his  flowers  and  his  laurels.  He  stood  with  folded 
arms,  lost  in  the  reverie  of  expectation.  It  is  a  fact 
worthy  of  remark,  but  which  has  never  been  re- 
marked, that,  as  we  often  submit  our  sentiments  to 
one  fixed  resolve,  we  enter  into  a  sort  of  undertak- 
ing with  ourselves,  and,  as  it  were,  create  our  own 
destiny:  surely,  chance  has  not  so  large  a  part  in  it 
as  we  believe. 

"I  don't  see  the  horses,"  said  the  maid,  sitting 
upon  a  trunk. 

"And  I  don't  see  any  traveled  road,"  said  the 
servant. 

"There  have  been  horses  here,  however,  "said  the 
maid,  pointing  to  the  proofs  of  their  presence. — 
"Monsieur,"  said  she  to  Calyste,  "is  this  the  road 
to  Guerande.?" 

"Yes,"  he  replied.     "Whom  do  you  expect.?" 

"They  wrote  us  that  they  would  send  to  meet  us 
from  Les  Touches. — If  they  should  be  late,  I  don't 
know  how  Madame  la  Marquise  would  dress,"  she 
said  to  the  servant  "You  ought  to  go  on  to  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches'.     What  a  land  of  savages!" 


176  BEATRIX 

Calyste  had  a  vague  sense  of  the  falseness  of  his 
position. 

**Has  your  mistress  gone  to  Les  Touches?"  he 
asked. 

"Mademoiselle  came  to  fetch  her  at  seven  this 
morning,"  she  replied.  "Ah!  here  are  the 
horses — " 

Calyste  darted  away  toward  Guerande  with  the 
swiftness  and  agility  of  a  chamois,  making  a  detour 
in  order  not  to  be  recognized  by  the  people  from 
Les  Touches;  but  on  the  narrow  road  through  the 
marshes,  which  he  took  he  met  two  of  them. 

"Shall  I  go  in  or  shall  I  not.?"  he  thought  as  he 
spied  the  tops  of  the  Les  Touches  pines. 

He  was  afraid;  he  returned  contrite  and  abashed 
to  Guerande  and  walked  up  and  down  the  mall, 
where  he  continued  his  deliberations.  He  shivered 
as  he  looked  at  Les  Touches  and  scrutinized  the 
weathercocks. 

"She  doesn't  suspect  my  agitation!"  he  said  to 
himself. 

His  capricious  thoughts  were  like  so  many  grap- 
pling irons  that  buried  themselves  in  his  heart  and 
there  held  the  marchioness  fast  Calyste  had  not 
had  these  anticipatory  joys  and  fears  with  Camille; 
he  had  met  her  riding  and  his  desire  was  born  as  at 
the  aspect  of  a  lovely  flower  he  would  have  liked  to 
pluck.  These  uncertainties  are  like  poems  in  timid 
hearts.  Heated  by  the  first  flames  of  the  imagina- 
tion, such  hearts  revolt,  wax  wroth,  are  tranquillized 
and  excited  by  turns,  and  attain  in  silence  and 


BEATRIX  177 

solitude  the  most  exalted  degree  of  love,  before  they 
have  accosted  the  object  of  such  violent  emotions. 

Calyste  espied  the  Chevalier  du  Halga  in  the  dis- 
tance on  the  mall,  walking  with  Mademoiselle  de 
Pen-Hoel;  he  heard  his  name  mentioned  and  con- 
cealed himself.  The  chevalier  and  the  old  maid, 
thinking  they  were  alone  on  the  mall,  were  talking 
in  a  loud  voice. 

"When  Charlotte  de  Kergarouet  comes,"  said  the 
chevalier,  "keep  her  three  or  four  months.  How  do 
you  expect  her  to  flirt  with  Calyste?  she  never 
stays  long  enough  to  undertake  it ;  whereas,  if  they 
see  each  other  every  day,  the  two  children  will  end 
by  falling  over  head  and  ears  in  love,  and  you  can 
marry  them  off  next  winter.  If  you  say  two  words 
of  your  intentions  to  Charlotte,  she  will  soon  say 
four  to  Calyste,  and  a  girl  of  sixteen  will  surely  get 
the  better  of  a  woman  of  forty  years  and  more." 

The  two  old  people  turned  to  retrace  their  steps ; 
Calyste  heard  no  more,  but  he  understood  Mademoi- 
selle de  Pen-Hoel's  purpose.  In  his  condition  of 
heart,  nothing  could  be  more  fatal.  Does  a  young 
man  accept  for  his  wife  a  young  woman  who  is 
forced  upon  him,  in  the  midst  of  the  hopes  conse- 
quent upon  a  preconceived  passion  ? 

Calyste,  to  whom  Charlotte  de  Kergarouet  was 
perfectly  indifferent,  felt  disposed  to  rebuff  her. 
He  was  inaccessible  to  any  pecuniary  considera- 
tions, he  had  adapted  his  life  from  childhood  to 
the  mediocrity  of  the  paternal  household,  and,  fur- 
thermore,   he   knew   nothing  of    Mademoiselle  de 


178  BEATRIX 

Pen-Hoel's  wealth,  seeing  that  she  lived  in  as  poor 
a  fashion  as  the  Du  Guenics.  In  a  word,  a  young 
man  reared  as  Calyste  had  been  was  certain  to 
ascribe  no  importance  to  aught  but  the  sentiments, 
and  all  his  thoughts  belonged  to  the  marchioness. 
What  was  little  Charlotte  in  face  of  the  portrait 
Camille  had  sketched  to  him?  The  companion  of 
his  childhood,  whom  he  treated  as  a  sister  I 

He  did  not  return  to  the  house  until  five  o'clock. 
When  he  entered  the  hall,  his  mother,  with  a  sad 
smile,  handed  him  a  note  from  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches : 

"My  DEAR  Calyste: 

"The  fair  Marquise  de  Rochefide  has  come  and 
we  rely  upon  you  to  help  us  to  celebrate  her  arrival. 
Claude,  who  is  forever  joking,  insists  that  you  will 
be  Bice  and  that  she  will  be  Dante.  The  honor  of 
Bretagne  and  of  the  house  of  Du  Guenic  is  con- 
cerned in  offering  a  Casteran  a  fitting  reception. 
Come  soon. 

"Your  friend, 

"Camille  Maupin. 

"Come  informally,  just  as  you  are;  or  you  will 
make  us  appear  ridiculous." 

Calyste  showed  the  letter  to  his  mother  and  de- 
parted. 

"Who  are  the  Casterans?"  she  asked  the  baron. 
"An  old  Norman  family,  connected  with  William 


BEATRIX  179 

the  Conqueror,"  he  replied.  "Their  arms  are  tierce 
in  f esse,  a^ure,  gules  and  sable,  with  the  running  horse 
shod  with  gold.  The  fair  creature  for  whom  Le 
Gars  gave  up  his  life  in  1800,  at  Fougeres,  was 
the  daughter  of  a  Casteran,  who  became  a  nun  at 
Seez  and  was  afterwards  abbess  there,  after  she  was 
deserted  by  the  Due  de  Verneuil." 

"And  the  Rochefides?" 

"I  don't  know  that  name;  I  should  have  to  see 
their  crest." 

The  baroness  was  somewhat  comforted  to  learn 
that  Marquise  Beatrix  de  Rochefide  belonged  to  an 
old  family;  but  she  still  felt  a  sort  of  terror  at  the 
thought  that  her  son  was  exposed  to  fresh  seduc- 
tions. 

Calyste  as  he  walked  along  was  conscious  of 
emotions  that  were  at  the  same  time  violent  and 
delicious;  he  had  a  choking  sensation  at  the  throat, 
his  heart  was  swollen,  his  brain  in  a  whirl ;  he  was 
consumed  by  fever.  He  attempted  to  slacken  his 
speed,  but  a  superior  force  kept  him  rushing  on. 
All  young  men  have  experienced  the  impetuosity  of 
the  senses  aroused  by  a  vague  hope :  a  subtle  fire 
blazes  within,  and  sheds  a  light  about  them  like  the 
clouds  painted  about  the  divine  personages  in  relig- 
ious pictures,  and  through  it  they  see  nature  alight 
and  woman  radiant  Are  they  not  at  such  times 
like  saints,  full  of  faith  and  hope,  of  ardor  and 
purity  ? 

The  young  Breton  found  the  party  assembled  in 
the  small  salon  of  Camille's  suite.     It  was  then 


l8o  BEATRIX 

about  six  o'clock;  the  setting  sun  was  darting 
through  the  window  its  ruddy  beams,  broken  by  the 
trees;  the  atmosphere  was  still  and  the  salon  was  in 
the  half-darkness  that  women  love  so  well. 

"Here  is  the  deputy  from  Bretagne,"  said  Ca- 
mille  Maupin  smilingly  to  her  friend,  waving  her 
hand  toward  Calyste  as  he  put  aside  the  tapestry 
portiere.     "He's  as  punctual  as  a  king." 

"Did  you  recognize  his  step.?"  said  Claude 
Vignon. 

Calyste  bowed  low  before  the  marchioness,  who 
replied  with  a  motion  of  her  head ;  he  had  not  looked 
at  her.  He  took  the  hand  Claude  Vignon  offered 
him  and  pressed  it 

"This  is  the  great  man  of  whom  we  have  told  you 
so  much,  Gennaro  Conti,"  said  Camille,  without 
answering  Vignon's  question. 

She  pointed  to  a  man  of  middle  height,  of  slight, 
spare  build,  with  chestnut  hair,  eyes  that  were 
almost  red,  and  fair  complexion  marred  by  red 
blotches ;  his  head  bore  so  close  a  resemblance  to 
the  familiar  head  of  Lord  Byron  that  it  would  be 
superfluous  to  describe  it,  save  to  say  that  he  carried 
it  somewhat  better,  perhaps.  Conti  was  extremely 
proud  of  the  resemblance. 

"I  am  enchanted  to  meet  monsieur,  having  but 
one  day  to  pass  at  Les  Touches,"  said  Gennaro. 

"It  is  for  me  to  say  that  of  you,"  replied  Calyste 
with  sufficient  ease  of  manner. 

"He  is  as  beautiful  as  an  angel,"  said  the  mar- 
chioness to  Felicite. 


BEATRIX  l8l 

Standing  between  the  divan  and  the  two  ladies, 
Calyste  heard  these  words  indistinctly,  although 
they  were  whispered  in  Felicite's  ear.  He  sat  down 
in  an  easy-chair  and  glanced  stealthily  at  the  mar- 
chioness several  times.  In  the  soft  light  of  the  set- 
ting sun  he  espied,  half-reclining  upon  the  divan  as 
if  she  were  posing  for  some  sculptor,  a  white,  ser- 
pentine form  that  made  his  head  swim. 

Felicite  had  unwittingly  served  her  friend  well 
by  her  description.  Beatrix  was  more  beautiful 
than  the  portrait,  not  at  all  exaggerated,  painted  by 
Camille  the  day  before.  Was  it  not  with  an  eye  to 
the  expected  guest  that  Beatrix  had  placed  in  her 
royally  beautiful  hair,  bunches  of  bluebells,  which 
brought  out  the  pale  tone  of  her  crisp  curls,  arranged 
to  fall  playfully  down  by  her  cheeks  as  a  fitting 
accompaniment  to  her  face.'  The  half  circles  below 
her  eyes,  darkened  by  fatigue,  were  like  the  purest, 
most  variable  mother-of-pearl,  and  her  complexion 
was  as  brilliant  as  her  eyes.  Beneath  her  white 
skin,  fme  as  the  satiny  pellicle  of  an  egg,  the  life- 
blood  throbbed  in  glistening,  bluish  streams.  The 
delicacy  of  her  features  was  beyond  expression. 
The  forehead  appeared  to  be  transparent.  The 
graceful,  shapely  head,  admirably  poised  upon  a 
long  neck  of  marvelous  form,  was  adapted  to  the 
most  varying  expressions.  The  waist,  which  could 
be  taken  in  the  hands,  was  enchanting  in  its  sug- 
gestion of  graceful  nonchalance.  The  bare  shoulders 
gleamed  in  the  shadow  like  a  white  camellia  in  a 
mass  of  black  hair.     The  throat,  cleverly  disclosed 


l82  BEATRIX 

to  view,  although  covered  with  a  transparent  neck- 
erchief, afforded  a  glimpse  of  two  contours  of  ex- 
quisite, alluring  beauty.  The  white  muslin  dress 
dotted  with  blue  flowers,  the  full  sleeves,  the 
pointed  bodice  with  no  girdle,  the  buskin-like  shoes 
with  straps  crossed  over  stockings  of  Scotch  thread, 
denoted  a  most  remarkable  knowledge  of  the  art  of 
dressing.  Earrings  of  silver  filigree-work,  a  mir- 
acle of  Genoese  workmanship,  which  would  soon 
become  fashionable,  doubtless,  were  perfectly  in 
harmony  with  the  delicious  soft  effect  of  the  fair 
hair  starred  with  bluebells. 

At  a  single  glance,  Calyste's  greedy  eyes  seized 
upon  these  charms  and  engraved  them  upon  his 
heart  The  fair  Beatrix  and  the  dark  Felicite  might 
have  recalled  the  contrasts  so  popular  among  English 
sculptors  and  draughtsmen  for  use  on  keepsakes. 
There  were  woman's  strength  and  woman's  weak- 
ness in  their  most  perfect  development — a  complete 
antithesis.  The  two  women  could  never  be  rivals, 
for  each  had  her  own  empire.  It  was  a  delicate 
periwinkle  or  lily  beside  a  superb,  brilliant  red 
poppy,  a  turquoise  beside  a  ruby.  In  a  moment, 
Calyste  was  in  the  grasp  of  a  passion  that  crowned 
the  secret  labor  of  his  hopes,  his  fears,  his  uncer- 
tainties. Mademoiselle  des  Touches  had  aroused 
his  mind,  Beatrix  set  fire  to  his  heart  and  his  imagi- 
nation. The  young  Breton  felt  a  mighty  force 
spring  up  within  him — a  force  to  overpower  every- 
thing, to  respect  nothing.  And  so  he  darted  at 
Conti  the  jealous,  threatening,  bitter,  fearful  glare 


BEATRIX  183 

caused  by  the  feeling  of  rivalry  he  had  never  felt 
for  Claude  Vignon. 

Calyste  exerted  all  his  strength  to  restrain  him- 
self, thinking  nevertheless  that  the  Turks  were 
justified  in  shutting  up  their  women,  and  that  the 
beautiful  creatures  should  be  forbidden  to  exhibit 
themselves  in  their  seductive  coquetry  to  young 
men  on  fire  with  passion.  This  violent  storm  was 
allayed  as  soon  as  Beatrix  turned  her  eyes  upon 
him  and  he  heard  her  soft  voice;  the  poor  child 
already  feared  her  as  he  feared  God. 

The  dinner-bell  rang. 

"Calyste,  give  your  arm  to  the  marchioness,'* 
said  Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  putting  her  right 
arm  through  Conti's  and  her  left  through  Vignon's 
and  standing  aside  to  allow  the  young  couple  to  pass. 

To  descend  the  old  stairway  at  Les  Touches  in 
this  fashion  was,  to  Calyste,  like  going  into  battle 
for  the  first  time:  his  heart  failed  him,  he  could 
think  of  nothing  to  say,  a  fine  perspiration  stood  out 
on  his  forehead  and  his  back;  his  arm  trembled  so 
that  on  the  last  stair  the  marchioness  said  to  him : 

"What  is  the  matter?" 

"Why,"  he  replied  in  a  choking  voice,  "I  have 
never  in  my  life  seen  a  woman  as  lovely  as  you, 
except  my  mother,  and  1  cannot  master  my  emo- 
tion." 

"Haven't  you  Camille  Maupin  here.?" 

"Oh!  what  a  difference!"  said  Calyste  artlessly. 

"Well,  well,  Calyste,"  Felicite  whispered  in  his 
ear;  "didn't  I  tell  you  that  you  would  forget  me  as 


1 84  BEATRIX 

completely  as  if  I  had  never  existed?  Sit  there,  at 
her  right,  and  Vignon  at  her  left — As  for  you,  Gen- 
naro,"  she  laughed,  "I  will  keep  you  by  me  and  we 
will  watch  her  coquetries." 

The  peculiar  emphasis  with  which  Camilla 
uttered  these  last  words  impressed  Claude,  who 
darted  at  her  the  sly,  quasi-absent-minded  glance, 
which,  in  him,  denoted  that  the  powers  of  observa- 
tion were  on  the  alert  He  did  not  cease  to  watch 
Mademoiselle  des  Touches  during  the  dinner. 

*'Coquetries!"  repeated  the  marchioness,  drawing 
off  her  gloves  and  showing  her  magnificent  hands ; 
"Ihave  sufficient  justification.  On  one  side  I  have 
a  poet,"  she  added,  pointing  to  Claude,  **and  on  the 
other,  poetry." 

Gennaro  Conti  bestowed  a  flattering  glance  upon 
Calyste.  In  the  bright  light,  Beatrix  was  even 
lovelier  than  before.  The  white  light  of  the  can- 
dles produced  the  effect  of  satin  on  her  forehead, 
kindled  sparks  in  her  gazelle-like  eyes  and  played 
through  her  silky  curls,  making  them  gleam  and 
bringing  to  light  some  golden  threads.  She  threw 
back  her  gauze  scarf  with  a  graceful  gesture  and 
uncovered  her  neck.  Calyste  thereupon  perceived 
the  delicate  nape,  as  white  as  milk,  marked  by  a 
sturdy  furrow  that  parted  in  two  waves,  flowing  to- 
ward each  shoulder  with  graceful  and  deceptive 
symmetry.  These  transformations  in  which  women 
indulge  produce  little  effect  in  society,  where  all 
eyes  are  sated,  but  they  make  cruel  ravages  in 
hearts  as  inexperienced  as  Calyste's.     That  neck. 


BEATRIX  185 

SO  unlike  Camille's,  indicated  that  Beatrix's  dispo- 
sition was  entirely  different  from  hers.  The  pride 
of  race,  a  tenacity  of  purpose  peculiar  to  the  nobility, 
and  an  indefinable  suggestion  of  hardness  were 
recognizable  in  this  double  ligament,  which  is  per- 
haps the  last  trace  of  the  power  of  the  ancient  con- 
querors. 

Calyste  had  the  utmost  difficulty  in  going  through 
the  form  of  eating ;  he  was  so  afflicted  with  nervous- 
ness that  it  took  away  his  appetite.  As  in  all 
young  men,  nature  had  fallen  a  victim  to  the  con- 
vulsions that  precede  first  love  and  engrave  it  so 
deeply  in  the  heart.  At  that  age,  the  ardor  of  the 
heart,  held  in  check  by  moral  ardor,  leads  to  an 
internal  conflict,  which  explains  the  long,  respectful 
hesitation,  the  profound  meditation  of  affection  and 
the  absence  of  all  calculation, — attractions  peculiar 
to  young  men  whose  hearts  and  lives  are  pure. 

As  he  studied — stealthily,  it  is  true,  in  order  not 
to  arouse  the  jealous  Gennaro's  suspicions — the 
details  that  make  the  Marquise  de  Rochefide  so 
nobly  beautiful,  Calyste  was  soon  oppressed  by  the 
majesty  of  the  beloved  object ;  he  felt  dwarfed  by  the 
elevation  of  certain  of  her  glances,  by  the  imposing 
expression  of  a  face  overflowing  with  aristocratic 
sentiments,  by  a  certain  pride  which  women  express 
by  slight  movements,  by  the  manner  of  holding  the 
head,  by  admirable  moderation  of  gesture — all  of 
which  are  less  plastic,  less  studied  effects  than  is 
commonly  supposed. 

These  trivial  details  of  their  changes  of  feature 


1 86  BEATRIX 

correspond  to  the  countless  qualms  and  agitations  of 
their  hearts.  There  is  sentiment  in  all  these  ex- 
pressions. The  false  situation  in  which  Beatrix 
was  placed,  forced  her  to  keep  watch  upon  herself, 
to  make  herself  imposing  without  being  ridiculous, 
and  all  women  in  the  higher  ranks  of  society  know 
how  to  attain  this  result,  which  is  the  obstacle  in 
the  path  of  vulgar  women. 

From  Felicite's  glances,  Beatrix  divined  the  inter- 
nal adoration  she  was  inspiring  in  her  neighbor, 
and  that  it  was  unworthy  of  her  to  encourage  it  ; 
she  therefore  bestowed  upon  Calyste  at  the  proper 
moment  a  repressive  glance  or  two  that  fell  upon 
him  like  avalanches  of  snow.  The  poor  fellow  com- 
plained to  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  by  a  look  in 
which  she  could  detect  the  tears  held  back  in  his 
heart  by  superhuman  energy,  and  Felicite  amiably 
inquired  why  he  was  eating  nothing.  Calyste 
stuffed  himself  at  her  command,  and  made  a  pre- 
tence of  taking  part  in  the  conversation.  The  in- 
supportable thought  of  being  a  bore  instead  of 
making  himself  agreeable  to  her  was  hammering  at 
his  brain.  He  was  the  more  shamefaced  because  he 
saw  behind  the  marchioness's  chair,  the  servant  he 
had  seen  in  the  morning  on  the  jetty,  who,  of 
course,  would  mention  his  curiosity. 

Whether  he  was  contrite  or  happy,  Madame  de 
Rochefide  took  no  further  notice  of  her  neighbor. 
Mademoiselle  des  Touches  having  started  her  upon 
her  Italian  travels,  she  described  in  an  entertaining 
way,  the  point-blank  passion  with  which  a  Russian 


BEATRIX  187 

diplomatist  at  Florence  had  honored  her,  making 
sport  of  the  beardless  youths  who  pounce  upon 
women,  like  locusts  upon  anything  green.  She 
made  Claude  Vignon  laugh  and  Gennaro  and 
Felicite  herself,  although  her  shafts  of  ridicule  went 
to  Calyste's  heart,  and  through  the  buzzing  in  his 
ears  and  his  brain  he  heard  only  disconnected  words. 
The  poor  boy  did  not  register  an  oath,  as  certain 
persistent  youths  might  have  done,  that  he  would 
have  the  woman  at  any  price;  no,  he  was  not 
angry,  he  was  suffering.  When  he  detected  a  pur- 
pose on  the  part  of  Beatrix  to  immolate  him  at 
Gennaro's  feet,  he  said  to  himself:  "Let  me  serve 
her  in  some  way!"  and  allowed  himself  to  be  mal- 
treated with  lamb-like  meekness. 

"How  can  you,  who  admire  poesy  so  profoundly, 
receive  it  so  unkindly?"  said  Claude  Vignon  to  the 
marchioness.  "Is  not  such  artless  admiration,  so 
sweet  in  its  expression,  so  devoted,  and  with  no 
trace  of  ulterior  motive,  the  true  poesy  of  the  heart? 
Confess  that  it  leaves  you  with  a  feeling  of  pleasure 
and  well-being." 

"Most  assuredly,"  said  she;  "but  we  should  be 
very  unhappy  and,  more  than  that,  very  unworthy, 
if  we  yielded  to  all  the  passions  we  inspire." 

"If  you  didn't  make  a  selection,"  said  Conti, 
"we  should  not  be  so  proud  of  being  loved." 

"When  shall  I  be  selected  and  distinguished  by  a 
woman?"  thought  Calyste,  with  difficulty  repress- 
ing his  painful  emotion. 

He  blushed  thereupon  like  a  wounded  man  when 


1 88  BEATRIX 

a  finger  is  carelessly  pressed  upon  his  wound.  Ma- 
demoiselle des  Touches  was  touched  by  the  expres- 
sion of  his  face  and  tried  to  comfort  him  with  a 
sympathetic  glance.  That  glance  Claude  Vignon 
detected.  From  that  moment,  the  critic  abounded  in 
good  humor,  which  he  expended  in  sarcasm;  he 
argued  with  Beatrix  that  love  existed  only  through 
desire,  that  most  women  deceived  themselves  when 
they  fell  in  love,  that  they  loved  very  frequently 
for  reasons  unknown  to  themselves  as  well  as  to  the 
men  concerned,  that  they  sometimes  wanted  to  de- 
ceive themselves,  and  that  the  noblest  of  them  were 
artificial. 

"Keep  your  opinions  for  books,  don't  criticize  our 
sentiments,"  said  Camille,  with  an  imperious 
glance  at  him. 

The  dinner  ceased  to  be  cheerful.  Claude 
Vignon's  mockery  had  made  the  two  women 
thoughtful.  Calyste  was  conscious  of  horrible 
suffering  amid  the  bliss  that  the  mere  sight  of 
Beatrix  afforded  him.  Conti  tried  to  read  the  mar- 
chioness's thoughts  in  her  eyes. 

When  the  dinner  was  at  an  end,  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches  took  Calyste's  arm,  turned  the  other  two 
men  over  to  the  marchioness  and  allowed  them  to 
go  before  so  that  she  might  have  an  opportunity  to 
say  to  the  young  Breton : 

"My  dear  boy,  if  the  marchioness  falls  in  love  with 
you,  she  will  throw  Conti  through  the  window ;  but 
you  are  behaving  just  now  in  a  way  to  tighten 
their  bonds.     Suppose  she  should  be  overjoyed  by 


BEATRIX  189 

your  adoration,  could  she  afford  to  notice  it  ?  Be  a 
man." 

"She  was  harsh  to  me,  she  will  never  love  me," 
said  Calyste,  '*and  if  she  doesn't  love  me,  I  shall 
die." 

"Die! — you,  my  dear  Calyste?"  said  Camille. 
"You're  a  child.     You  didn't  die  for  me,  did  you?" 

"You  became  my  friend,"  he  replied. 

After  the  small  talk  that  the  coffee  always  en- 
genders, Vignon  begged  Conti  to  sing.  Mademoi- 
selle des  Touches  took  her  place  at  the  piano.  She 
and  Gennaro  sang  the  Dunqne  il  mio  bene  iu  mia 
sarai,  the  last  duo  in  Zingarelli's  Romeo  and  Juliet^ 
one  of  the  most  pathetic  productions  in  modern 
music  The  passage  Di  tanti  palpiti  expresses  love 
in  all  its  grandeur. 

Calyste,  sitting  in  the  chair  in  which  F^licite  had 
told  him  the  marchioness*  story,  listened  religiously. 
Beatrix  and  Vignon  were  on  opposite  sides  of  the 
piano.  Conti 's  sublime  voice  blended  perfectly 
with  Felicite's.  Both  had  sung  the  duo  many 
times,  they  knew  all  its  possibilities,  and  united 
their  efforts  to  make  the  most  of  them  with  mar- 
velous effect  It  was  at  that  moment  what  the 
musician  intended  to  create,  a  poem  of  divine  mel- 
ancholy, the  adieux  to  life  of  two  swans.  When  it 
was  done,  each  of  the  auditors  was  overpowered  by 
sensations  which  ordinary  applause  is  inadequate 
to  express. 

"Ah!  music  is  the  first  of  the  arts!"  cried  the 
marchioness. 


IQO  BEATRIX 

" Cam i lie  places  youth  and  beauty  first,  the  first 
of  all  poems,"  said  Claude  Vignon. 

Mademoiselle  des  Touches  looked  at  Claude,  con- 
cealing a  vague  feeling  of  uneasiness.  Beatrix,  not 
seeing  Calyste,  turned  her  head  as  if  to  discover 
what  effect  the  music  had  had  upon  him,  less 
through  any  interest  in  him  than  for  Conti's  satis- 
faction :  she  espied  in  the  window  recess,  a  white 
face  wet  with  great  tears.  At  that  sight,  as  if  she 
felt  a  sharp  pain,  she  quickly  turned  away  and 
looked  at  Gennaro. 

Not  only  had  Music  reared  its  head  before 
Calyste,  touched  him  with  its  divine  wand  and 
torn  away  the  veil  that  hid  creation  from  him,  but 
he  was  stricken  dumb  by  Conti's  genius.  Despite 
whatCamille  Maupin  had  told  him  of  his  character, 
he  believed  then  that  he  had  a  lovely  soul,  a  heart 
overflowing  with  love.  How  contend  against  such 
an  artist?  how  could  a  woman  not  adore  him  for- 
ever ?  The  music  entered  his  heart  as  if  it  were 
another  heart  The  poor  child  was  as  much  over- 
whelmed by  poetic  feeling  as  by  despair ;  he  seemed 
to  himself  such  a  poor  creature!  This  ingenuous 
self-accusation  of  nonentity  could  be  read  in  his 
face,  mingled  with  his  admiration.  He  did  not 
notice  Beatrix's  gesture,  as  she  called  Mademoiselle 
des  Touches'  attention  to  him  by  a  sign. 

**Oh!  the  adorable  heart!"  cried  Felicite. 
"Conti,  you  will  never  receive  applause  that  will 
be  worth  as  much  as  that  child's  homage.  Let  us 
sing  a  trio. — Come,  Beatrix,  my  dear!" 


BEATRIX  191 

When  the  marchioness,  Felicite  and  Conti  gath- 
ered about  the  piano,  Calyste  rose  softly,  unseen 
by  them,  threw  himself  on  one  of  the  sofas  in  the 
bedroom,  the  door  of  which  was  open,  and  lay  there 
plunged  in  despair. 


PART  SECOND 

The  Drama 


"What's  the  matter,  my  boy?"  said  Claude,  glid- 
ing silently  in  Calyste's  wake,  and  taking  his  hand. 
"You  are  in  love,  you  fancy  that  your  love  is  dis- 
dained; but  nothing  of  the  sort  is  true.  In  a  few 
days,  you  will  have  the  field  to  yourself  here,  you 
will  be  king,  you  will  be  loved  by  more  than  one 
person;  in  fact,  if  you  only  knew  how  to  behave 
judiciously,  you  would  be  a  sort  of  sultan." 

"What  do  you  say?"  cried  Calyste,  rising  and 
beckoning  Claude  to  follow  him  into  the  library. 
"Who  in  this  house  loves  me?" 

"Camille,"  Claude  replied. 

"Camille  loves  me !"  demanded  Calyste.  "Why, 
what  about  yourself?" 

"I,"  said  Claude,  "I—" 

He  did  not  finish.  He  sat  down  and,  with  a  pro- 
foundly melancholy  air,  laid  his  head  against  a 
cushion. 

"I  am  tired  of  life  and  I  haven't  the  courage  to 
leave  it,"  he  said,  after  a  moment's  silence.  "I 
should  be  glad  to  know  that  I  am  mistaken  in  what 
13  (193) 


194  BEATRIX 

I  have  just  said  to  you ;  but  within  a  day  or  two, 
more  than  one  bright  ray  of  light  has  flashed  upon 
me.  I  didn't  walk  about  among  the  rocks  of  Le 
Croisic  for  pleasure,  God  knows!  The  bitterness 
of  my  words  when  I  returned  and  found  you  talking 
with  Camille,  had  its  source  in  the  depths  of  my 
wounded  self-esteem.  I  shall  have  an  explanation 
with  Camille  very  soon.  Two  minds  as  clear- 
sighted as  hers  and  mine  cannot  misunderstand 
each  other.  Between  two  professional  duelists,  the 
combat  does  not  last  long.  So  I  am  able  to  an- 
nounce my  approaching  departure  to  you  before- 
hand. Yes,  I  shall  leave  Les  Touches,  perhaps 
to-morrow,  with  Conti.  It  is  certain  that  strange 
things,  yes,  terrible  things  perhaps,  will  happen 
when  we  are  no  longer  here,  and  I  shall  have  to 
regret  my  absence  from  these  contests  of  passion, 
so  rare  in  France  and  so  dramatic.  You  are  very 
young  for  such  a  perilous  struggle ;  you  arouse  my 
interest  If  it  were  not  for  the  profound  disgust 
with  which  women  inspire  me,  I  would  stay  and 
help  you  to  play  the  game;  it  is  a  difficult  one  and 
you  may  lose  it,  for  you  have  to  do  with  two  extra- 
ordinary women,  and  you  are  too  much  in  love 
with  one  of  them  already  to  make  use  of  the  other. 
Beatrix  is  certain  to  have  a  streak  of  obstinacy  in 
her  character,  and  Camille  has  elements  of  grandeur. 
Perhaps  you  will  be  sucked  up  by  the  eddying 
whirlpool  of  passion  and  shattered,  like  a  frail  and 
delicate  vessel,  between  those  two  reefs.  Be  on 
your  guard." 


BEATRIX  IQ5 

Calyste's  stupefaction  on  hearing  these  words 
made  it  possible  for  Claude  to  say  them  and  leave 
the  young  Breton,  who  was  like  a  traveler  among 
the  Alps,  to  whom  a  guide  has  shown  the  depth  of 
an  abyss  by  throwing  in  a  stone.  To  learn  from 
Claude's  own  mouth  that  he,  Calyste,  was  loved 
by  Camille,  at  the  moment  when  he  felt  that  his 
heart  was  given  to  Beatrix  for  ever !  the  situation 
bore  too  heavily  upon  so  young  and  innocent  a 
heart  Weighed  down  by  overwhelming  regret  for 
the  past,  driven  to  despair  in  the  present  by  the 
difficulty  of  his  position  between  Beatrix  whom  he 
loved,  and  Camille  whom  he  had  ceased  to  love, 
yet  by  whom  Claude  said  that  he  was  beloved,  the 
poor  boy  was  half-distracted,  and  he  sat  lost  in 
thought,  uncertain  what  course  to  pursue.  He  tried 
in  vain  to  conjecture  Felicite's  reasons  for  rejecting 
his  love  and  hurrying  to  Paris  to  bring  back  Claude 
Vignon.  At  intervals,  Beatrix's  clear,  fresh  voice 
reached  his  ears  and  renewed  the  violent  emotion 
which  he  had  left  the  small  salon  to  avoid.  Again 
and  again  he  felt  almost  unable  to  master  a  fierce 
desire  to  seize  her  and  carry  her  away.  What  was 
to  become  of  him  ?  Should  he  come  to  Les  Touches 
again  ?  Knowing  that  Camille  loved  him,  how  could 
he  worship  Beatrix  under  her  roof.''  He  could  find 
no  solution  to  his  difficulties. 

Insensibly,  silence  fell  upon  the  house.  He  heard, 
but  did  not  heed,  the  sound  of  several  doors  closing. 
Suddenly,  he  heard  the  clock  strike  twelve  in  the 
adjoining  bedroom,    which   was    brightly   lighted. 


196  BEATRIX 

and  Claude's  voice  and  Camille's  aroused  him  from 
the  benumbing  contemplation  of  his  future.  Before 
he  could  make  I<nown  his  presence,  he  heard  these 
terrifying  words  uttered  by  Vignon: 

"You  arrived  at  Paris  madly  in  love  with 
Calyste;  but  you  were  alarmed  by  the  probable 
consequences  of  such  a  passion  at  your  age — it 
would  lead  you  into  a  yawning  pit,  a  hell,  perhaps 
to  suicide!  Love  has  no  real  existence  unless  it 
believes  itself  to  be  everlasting,  and  you  saw  the 
inevitable  heartbreaking  separation  but  a  few  steps 
away  in  your  life:  for  distaste  and  old  age  soon  put 
an  end  to  a  sublime  poem.  You  remembered 
Adolphe,  the  ghastly  conclusion  of  the  loves  of  Ma- 
dame de  Stael  and  Benjamin  Constant,  who  were, 
however,  much  better  adapted  to  each  other  in  point 
of  age  than  you  and  Calyste.  You  thereupon  took 
me,  as  soldiers  take  fascines  to  throw  up  intrench- 
ments  between  themselves  and  the  enemy.  But, 
if  you  desired  to  make  me  fond  of  Les  Touches,  was 
it  not  so  that  you  might  pass  your  days  here  in 
secret  adoration  of  your  god?  To  carry  out  your 
ignoble  yet  sublime  project,  you  must  find  a  man 
of  common  mould  or  else  a  man  so  absorbed  by  lofty 
ideas  that  he  could  easily  be  deceived.  You  be- 
lieved me  to  be  simple-minded,  as  easy  to  hoodwink 
as  a  man  of  genius.  It  seems  that  I  am  simply  a 
man  of  intelligence:  I  divined  your  purpose.  When 
I  dilated  yesterday  upon  the  charms  of  women  at 
your  age,  by  way  of  explaining  to  you  why  Calyste 
loved  you,  do  you  think  that  I  took  your  fascinated. 


BEATRIX  197 

enchanted,  sparkling  glances  for  myself?  Had  I  not 
already  read  your  heart?  Your  eyes  were  turned 
upon  me,  it  is  true,  but  your  heart  was  beating  for 
Calyste.  You  have  never  been  loved,  my  poor 
Maupin,  and  you  never  will  be  after  refusing  the 
luscious  fruit  that  chance  put  in  your  way  at  the 
gates  of  the  hell  of  womankind,  the  gates  that  are 
made  to  swing  upon  their  hinges  by  the  figure  50!" 

"But  why  should  love  turn  its  back  on  me?"  said 
she  in  an  altered  voice.  "Tell  me,  you  who  know 
everything!" 

"Because  you  are  not  lovable,"  he  replied;  "you 
do  not  bend  to  love,  but  love  must  bend  to  you. 
You  may  have  the  faculty  of  giving  way  to  the 
mischievous  impulses  of  the  gamin,  but  you  have 
no  childishness  of  heart,  your  mind  is  too  profound, 
you  never  were  artless,  and  you  cannot  begin  to  be 
so  to-day.  Your  charm  is  the  charm  of  mystery,  it 
is  abstract  and  not  active.  In  short,  your  strength 
of  character  repels  men  of  equal  strength  who  fore- 
see a  constant  struggle.  Your  power  may  prove  an 
attraction  to  youthful  hearts  which,  like  Calyste's, 
love  to  be  patronized;  but  eventually  it  wearies 
them.  You  are  great  and  sublime:  you  must  sub- 
mit to  the  disadvantages  of  those  two  qualities; 
they  are  wearisome." 

"What  a  judgment!"  cried  Camille.  "Can  I  not 
be  a  woman?  am  I  a  monstrosity?" 

"Perhaps  so,"  said  Claude. 

"We  will  see!"  cried  the  woman,  stung  to  the 
quick. 


198  BEATRIX 

'"Adieu,  my  dear;  to-morrow  I  go,  I  bear  you 
no  ill-will,  Camille:  I  consider  you  the  grandest  of 
women ;  but  if  I  should  continue  to  serve  you  as  a 
screen  from  the  cold,  or  from  the  heat, "said Claude 
with  a  significant  change  of  inflection,  "you  would 
despise  me  beyond  words.  We  can  part  without 
sorrow  or  remorse:  we  have  no  joys  to  regret,  no 
disappointed  hopes.  For  you,  as  for  an  infinitely 
small  number  of  men  of  genius,  love  is  not  what 
nature  made  it:  an  imperious  necessity,  with  whose 
gratification  it  connects  keen  but  fleeting  pleasures, 
and  which  ceases  to  exist;  you  see  it  as  Christian- 
ity has  created  it:  an  ideal  kingdom,  full  of  noble 
sentiments,  of  grandeur  in  petty  things,  of  poesy, 
of  intellectual  emotions,  of  devotion,  of  flowers  of 
morality,  of  enchanting  harmonies, — a  kingdom  sit- 
uated far  beyond  the  vulgarities  of  the  common 
herd,  but  whither  two  hearts  united  in  one  angel 
are  wafted  on  the  wings  of  pleasure.  That  is  what 
I  hoped  for :  I  thought  to  grasp  one  of  the  keys  that 
open  to  us  the  door,  closed  to  so  many,  through 
which  one  passes  to  the  infinite.  You  were  already 
there!  And  thus  you  deceived  me.  I  return  to 
destitution,  to  my  vast  prison — Paris.  Such  a  dis- 
illusionment at  the  beginning  of  my  career  would 
have  been  enough  to  make  me  shun  women :  to-day 
it  casts  a  shadow  of  disenchantment  over  my  heart 
that  plunges  me  forever  into  ghastly  solitude,  and  I 
shall  not  have  the  faith  that  assisted  the  Fathers  to 
people  it  with  sacred  images.  That,  my  dear  Ca- 
mille, is  what  intellectual  superiority  brings  us  to; 


BEATRIX  199 

we  can  both  fitly  sing  the  melancholy  hymn  that  a 
poet  has  put  in  the  mouth  of  Moses  addressing  God : 

'"  O  Lord,  thou  hast  made  me  powerful  and  lonely ! ' " 

At  that  moment  Calyste  made  his  appearance. 

**I  ought  to  let  you  know  that  I  am  here,"  he 
said. 

Mademoiselle  des  Touches'  face  expressed  the 
utmost  dismay;  a  sudden  flush  made  her  cheeks 
the  color  of  flame.  During  this  whole  scene  she 
was  more  beautiful  than  at  any  other  moment  in 
her  life. 

"We  thought  you  had  gone,  Calyste,"  said 
Claude;  "but  this  involuntary  indiscretion  on  both 
sides  can  do  no  harm :  perhaps  you  will  feel  more 
at  ease  here  at  Les  Touches  now  that  you  know 
Felicite  through  and  through.  Her  silence  tells  me 
that  1  am  not  mistaken  as  to  the  part  she  proposed 
that  1  should  play.  She  loves  you,  as  I  told  you, 
but  she  loves  you  for  your  sake  and  not  for  her  own, 
— a  sentiment  that  few  women  are  capable  of  con- 
ceiving and  acting  upon :  few  of  them  know  the  joy 
of  sorrow  kept  alight  by  desire ;  that  is  one  of  the 
exalted  passions  reserved  for  man, — but  she  is  partly 
man !"  he  said,  jestingly.  "Your  passion  for  Beatrix 
will  cause  her  to  suffer  and,  at  the  same  time,  make 
her  happy." 

Tears  came  to  Felicite's  eyes,  and  she  dared  not 
look  either  at  the  terrible  Claude  Vignon,  or  the 
ingenuous  Calyste.     She  was  dismayed  to  find  that 


200  BEATRIX 

her  sentiments  had  been  discovered,  she  did  not 
believe  that  any  man,  however  keen  his  insight, 
could  fathom  such  cruel  delicacy  of  conduct,  such 
exalted  heroism  as  hers. 

When  he  saw  how  humiliated  she  was  by  the 
disclosure  of  her  grandeur,  Calyste  shared  the  emo- 
tion of  this  woman  whom  he  had  raised  so  high, 
and  whom  he  now  saw  cowering  in  the  dust 
Obeying  an  irresistible  impulse,  he  threw  himself 
at  her  feet  and  kissed  her  hands,  hiding  in  them 
his  face,  which  was  wet  with  tears. 

"Claude,  do  not  desert  me,"  said  she;  "what 
would  become  of  me?" 

"What  have  you  to  fear?"  replied  the  critic. 
"Calyste  already  loves  the  marchioness  like  a 
madman.  Surely  you  could  place  no  more  impass- 
able barrier  between  yourself  and  him  than  this 
passion  you  have  yourself  aroused.  It  will  serve 
you  as  well  as  I  could  do.  Yesterday,  there  was 
danger  both  for  you  and  him ;  but  to-day,  everything 
will  tend  to  afford  you  the  joy  a  mother  would  feel," 
he  added,  with  a  mocking  glance.  "You  will  be 
proud  of  his  triumphs." 

Mademoiselle  des  Touches  glanced  at  Calyste, 
who,  at  that  last  remark,  had  suddenly  raised  his 
head.  Claude  Vignon's  vengeance  went  no  farther 
than  to  take  what  pleasure  he  could  in  watching  the 
confusion  of  Calyste  and  Felicite. 

"You  gave  him  a  push  toward  Madame  de  Roche- 
fide,"  Claude  continued,  "and  now  he  is  under  the 
charm.      You  dug  your  own  grave.      If  you  had 


BEATRIX  20I 

confided  in  me,  you  would  have  avoided  the  disas- 
ters that  are  in  store  for  you." 

"Disasters!"  cried  Camille  Maupin,  taking 
Calyste's  head,  raising  it  to  her  face,  kissing  his 
hair,  and  shedding  tears  upon  it  in  profusion. 
"No,  Calyste,  you  must  forget  all  that  you  have 
heard  and  rely  upon  me  for  nothing!" 

She  rose,  drew  herself  up  to  her  full  height  before 
the  two  men  and  crushed  them  by  the  lightning- 
like flashes  from  her  eyes,  from  which  her  whole 
heart  shone  forth. 

"While  Claude  was  speaking,"  she  continued,  "I 
realized  the  beauty  and  grandeur  of  a  hopeless  love; 
is  it  not  the  only  sentiment  that  draws  us  near  to 
God.?  Do  not  love  me,  Calyste;  but  I  will  love 
you  as  no  other  woman  will!" 

It  was  the  wildest  scream  that  ever  wounded 
eagle  uttered  in  its  eyry.  Claude  bent  his  knee, 
took  Felicite's  hand  and  kissed  it 

"Leave  us,  my  friend,"  said  she;  "your  mother 
may  be  anxious." 

Calyste  returned  to  Guerandewith  lagging  steps, 
turning  now  and  again  to  watch  the  light  that  shone 
in  the  windows  of  Beatrix's  apartments.  He  was 
surprised  himself  to  find  how  little  compassion  he 
felt  for  Camille ;  he  was  almost  angry  with  her  for 
having  deprived  him  of  fifteen  months  of  happiness. 
Then  he  would  be  conscious  again  of  the  inward 
thrill  that  her  words  had  caused  him,  he  would  feel 
in  his  hair  the  tears  she  had  left  there,  he  would 
suffer  in  sympathy  with   her  suffering,  he  would 


202  BEATRIX 

imagine  that  he  could  hear  the  groans  that  that 
noblewoman,  so  ardently  desired  a  few  days  before, 
was  doubtless  uttering. 

As  he  opened  the  gate  of  the  paternal  mansion, 
where  profound  silence  reigned,  he  saw  through  the 
window,  by  the  light  of  the  curious  lamp  we  have 
described,  his  mother  awaiting  his  return  and  work- 
ing the  while.  Tears  came  to  Calyste's  eyes  at  the 
sight 

"What  has  happened  now.?"  asked  Fanny,  whose 
face  expressed  painful  anxiety. 

Calyste's  only  reply  was  to  take  his  mother  in  his 
arms  and  kiss  her  cheeks  and  forehead  and  hair  in 
one  of  those  passionate  outbursts  of  affection  which 
gladden  the  hearts  of  mothers,  filling  them  with  the 
subtle  flames  of  the  life  they  have  given. 

"You  are  the  one  I  love,"  said  Calyste  almost 
shamefaced  and  blushing  hotly ;  "you,  who  live  only 
for  me,  you,  whom  I  would  like  to  make  happy." 

"But  you  are  not  in  your  ordinary  frame  of  mind, 
my  dear,"  said  the  baroness,  gazing  at  her  son. 
"What  has  happened  to  you.?" 

"Camille  loves  me  and  I  no  longer  love  her,"  he 
said. 

The  baroness  drew  Calyste  to  her  side  and  kissed 
him  on  the  forehead,  and,  in  the  profound  silence 
of  that  ancient,  dark  and  tapestried  apartment,  he 
heard  the  violent  beating  of  his  mother's  heart. 
The  Irish  woman  was  jealous  of  Camille,  and  she 
had  had  a  presentiment  of  the  truth.  As  she  sat 
waiting  for  her  son  night  after  night,  the  mother 


BEATRIX  203 

had  divined  that  woman's  passion;  guided  by  the 
light  of  persistent  meditation,  she  had  penetrated 
Camille's  heart,  and,  although  unable  to  put  her 
thoughts  into  words,  she  had  imagined  that  she 
could  read  there  a  capricious  desire  to  become  a 
mother.  Calyste's  tale  terrified  the  simple-minded, 
innocent  creature. 

"Very  well,"  said  she  after  a  pause,  "love  Ma- 
dame de  Rochefide  if  you  choose;  she  will  not  cause 
me  such  anxiety." 

Beatrix  was  not  free,  she  would  not  change  any 
of  the  plans  that  had  been  formed  for  Calyste's 
happiness,  at  least,  so  Fanny  believed,  and  she  saw 
in  her  a  sort  of  daughter-in-law  to  love,  and  not 
another  mother  to  contend  against 

"But  Beatrix  will  not  love  me!"  cried  Calyste. 

"Perhaps  not,"  rejoined  the  baroness  slyly. 
"Didn't  you  tell  me  that  she  would  be  alone  to-mor- 
row?" 

"Yes." 

"Well,  my  child!"  said  the  mother,  blushing. 
"Jealousy  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  our  hearts;  I  did 
not  expect  to  find  it  stirring  some  day  in  mine,  for 
1  did  not  believe  that  anyone  was  likely  to  dispute 
my  claim  to  my  Calyste's  love!" — She  sighed — 
"I  thought,"  she  continued,  "that  marriage  would 
be  to  you  what  it  has  been  to  me.  What  a  light  you 
have  let  in  upon  my  heart  these  last  two  months ! 
what  bright  colors  your  passion — a  perfectly  natural 
passion — has  assumed,  poor  dear!  Well,  pretend 
still   to   be   in   love  with    your   Mademoiselle   des 


204  BEATRIX 

Touches;  the  marchioness  will  be  jealous  of  her, 
and  you  will  gain  your  end." 

"Ah!  my  dear  good  mother,  Camille  wouldn't 
have  suggested  that  to  me!"  cried  Calyste,  putting 
his  arm  about  his  mother's  waist  and  kissing  her 
neck. 

"You  make  me  very  wicked,  you  bad  boy,"  said 
she,  overjoyed  by  the  radiant  expression  that  hope 
brought  to  her  son's  face,  as  he  gayly  ascended  the 
turret  stairway. 

The  next  morning,  Calyste  sent  Gasselin  to  do 
sentry  duty  on  the  road  from  Guerande  to  Saint- 
Nazaire,  to  watch  until  Mademoiselle  des  Touches' 
carriage  passed,  and  to  count  the  persons  it  con- 
tained. 

Gasselin  returned  just  as  all  the  family  had  as- 
sembled and  were  breakfasting. 

"What  is  going  on?"  inquired  Mademoiselle  du 
Guenic;  "Gasselin  is  running  as  if  there  were  a 
fire  in  Guerande." 

"He  must  have  caught  the  field-mouse,"  said 
Mariotte,  as  she  brought  in  the  coffee,  milk  and  rolls. 

"He  is  coming  from  the  town,  not  from  the  gar- 
den," rejoined  Mademoiselle  du  Guenic. 

"But  the  field-mouse's  hole  is  outside  the  wall,  on 
the  square,"  said  Mariotte. 

"Monsieur  le  Chevalier,  there  were  five  of  them, 
— four  inside  and  the  coachman." 

"Two  ladies  on  the  back  seat.?"  queried  Calyste. 

"And  two  gentlemen  on  the  front  seat,"  Gasselin 
replied. 


BEATRIX  205 

''Saddle  my  father's  horse,  ride  after  them  so  that 
you  reach  Saint-Nazaire  just  as  the  boat  starts  for 
Paimboeuf,  and,  if  the  two  men  go  aboard,  ride 
bactc  at  full  speed  and  tell  me." 

Gasselin  left  the  room. 

"The  devil  is  in  you,  my  nephew!"  exclaimed 
old  Zephirine. 

"Pray  let  him  amuse  himself,  sister,"  cried  the 
baron;  "he  was  as  gloomy  as  an  owl  and  now  he's 
as  blithe  as  a  lark." 

"Perhaps  you  told  him  that  our  dear  Charlotte  is 
expected,  did  you?"  said  the  old  maid,  turning  to- 
ward her  sister-in-law. 

"No,"  the  baroness  replied. 

"I  thought  that  he  meant  to  go  and  meet  her," 
said  Mademoiselle  du  Guenic,  slyly. 

"If  Charlotte  stays  with  her  aunt  three  months, 
he  will  have  plenty  of  time  to  see  her,"  retorted  the 
baroness. 

"Well,  well,  sister,  what  has  happened  since 
yesterday,  pray?"  queried  the  old  maid.  "You 
were  so  delighted  to  learn  that  Mademoiselle  de 
Pen-Hoel  was  going  to  bring  her  niece  to  us  this 


morning 


"Jacqueline  wants  to  force  me  to  marry  Char- 
lotte to  save  me  from  perdition,  aunt,"  laughed 
Calyste,  darting  a  significant  glance  at  his  mother. 
"1  was  on  the  mall  when  she  was  talking  with  Mon- 
sieur du  Halga;  but  it  didn't  occur  to  her  that  it 
would  send  me  to  perdition  more  surely  to  marry 
me  off  at  my  age." 


206  BEATRIX 

"It  is  written,"  cried  the  old  maid,  interrupting 
Calyste,  "that  I  shall  not  end  my  days  in  tran- 
quillity or  happiness.  I  would  have  liked  to  see 
our  family  perpetuated,  and  some  of  our  estates  re- 
deemed,— but  I  must  give  up  all  thought  of  it.  Can 
you,  my  fme  nephew,  allow  anything  to  outweigh 
such  duties?" 

"Why!"  said  the  baron,  "will  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches  prevent  Calyste  from  marrying  when  the 
time  comes.?    I  must  go  and  see  her. " 

"I  can  assure  you,  father,  that  Felicite  will  never 
be  an  obstacle  to  my  marriage." 

"I  don't  understand  it  at  all,"  said  the  old  blind 
woman,  who  knew  nothing  of  her  nephew's  sudden 
passion  for  the  Marquise  de  Rochefide. 

The  mother  kept  her  son's  secret;  in  such  mat- 
ters women  instinctively  hold  their  peace.  The 
old  maid  fell  into  profound  thought,  listening  with 
eagerness  to  the  voices  and  to  every  sound,  seek- 
ing to  divine  the  mystery  they  were  concealing 
from  her. 

Gasselin  soon  returned  and  told  his  young  master 
that  he  had  had  no  need  to  go  to  Saint-Nazaire  to 
ascertain  that  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  and  her 
friend  would  return  alone,  as  he  had  learned  that 
fact  in  the  town  from  Bernus,  the  carrier,  who  had 
the  luggage  of  both  gentlemen  in  his  charge. 

"They  will  be  alone  when  they  return!"  cried 
Calyste.     "Saddle  my  horse. " 

From  his  young  master's  tone,  Gasselin  thought 
that  some  serious  affair  was  on  hand;   he  saddled 


BEATRIX  207 

both  horses,  loaded  the  pistols  without  a  word  to 
anyone,  and  dressed  himself,  in  order  to  attend 
Calyste. 

Calyste  was  so  content  with  the  knowledge  that 
Claude  and  Gennaro  had  gone,  that  he  did  not  think 
of  the  encounter  in  store  for  him  at  Saint-Nazaire; 
his  thoughts  were  full  of  the  pleasure  of  accompany- 
ing the  marchioness;  he  took  his  aged  father's 
hands  and  pressed  them  affectionately,  kissed  his 
mother  and  embraced  his  aunt. 

"After  all,  I  love  him  better  like  this  than  when 
he  is  so  depressed,"  said  old  Zephirine. 

"Where  are  you  going,  chevalier?"  the  baron 
inquired. 

"To  Saint-Nazaire." 

"The  devil!  And  when  is  the  wedding  to  be.'" 
rejoined  the  baron,  thinking  that  his  son  was  in 
haste  to  see  Charlotte  de  Kergarouet.  "I  am  very 
late  about  becoming  a  grandfather;  it's  high  time." 

When  Gasselin  appeared,  evidently  intending  to 
accompany  Calyste,  it  occurred  to  the  young  man 
that  he  might  return  in  the  carriage  with  Camille 
and  Beatrix,  and  turn  his  horse  over  to  Gasselin; 
so  he  clapped  him  on  the  shoulder,  saying: 

"That  was  a  bright  idea  of  yours." 

"So  I  think,"  was  Gasselin's  reply. 

"My  boy,"  said  the  baron,  coming  out  upon  the 
stoop  with  Fanny,  "be  careful  of  the  horses;  they 
have  twelve  leagues  to  do." 

Calyste  rode  away  after  exchanging  a  most 
searching  glance  with  his  mother. 


208  BEATRIX 

"Dear  love,"  said  she,  watching  him  bend  his 
head  as  he  passed  through  the  arched  gateway. 

"May  God  protect  him!"  said  the  baron,  "for  we 
could  not  reproduce  him." 

This  remark,  uttered  in  the  jovial  tone  character- 
istic of  provincial  noblemen,  made  the  baroness 
shudder. 

"My  nephew  doesn't  care  enough  for  Charlotte  to 
go  and  meet  her,"  said  the  old  maid  to  Mariotte  as 
she  was  removing  the  breakfast  dishes. 

"A  great  lady,  a  marchioness,  has  arrived  at  Les 
Touches,  and  he's  running  after  her!  Bah!  it's 
what  all  boys  do,"  said  Mariotte. 

"They  will  kill  him,"  said  Mademoiselle  du 
Guenic. 

"That  won't  kill  him,  mademoiselle;  far  from  it," 
rejoined  Mariotte,  who  seemed  happy  in  Calyste's 
happiness. 

Calyste  was  riding  at  a  pace  calculated  to  founder 
his  horse,  when  Gasselin  very  sagely  asked  him  if 
he  wished  to  arrive  before  the  boat  sailed.  That 
was  by  no  means  his  purpose,  for  he  did  not  wish  to 
show  himself  to  Conti  or  Claude.  He  therefore 
slackened  his  pace,  and  began  to  look  complacently 
at  the  double  ruts  made  by  the  wheels  of  the  cal^he 
in  the  sandy  portions  of  the  road.  His  gayety 
passed  all  bounds  as  he  thought:  "She  passed  this 
way;  she  will  return  this  way;  her  eyes  have 
rested  on  these  shrubs,  these  trees!" 

"What  a  lovely  road!"  he  said  to  Gasselin. 

"Ah!  monsieur,  Bretagne  is  the  finest  country  in 


BEATRIX  209 

the  world,"  replied  the  servant.  *'Are  there  flowers 
in  the  hedges  anywhere  else,  and  such  shady, 
winding  roads  as  that?" 

"Nowhere,  Gasselin." 

"There  comes  Bernus's  carriage,"  said  Gasselin. 

"Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  and  her  niece  will  be 
inside,"  said  Calyste;  "let  us  get  out  of  sight" 

"Here,  monsieur? — Are  you  mad?  Why,  we're 
on  the  sand." 

The  vehicle,  which  was  toiling  up  a  sandy  hill- 
side above  Saint-Nazaire,  appeared  before  Calyste's 
eyes  in  the  artless  simplicity  of  its  Breton  construc- 
tion.    To  his  great  amazement,  it  was  full. 

"We  left  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  and  her  sister 
and  niece  behind,"  said  the  driver  to  Gasselin; 
"they  are  in  great  trouble;  all  the  places  were  en- 
gaged by  the  custom-house  people." 

"1  am  lost!"  cried  Calyste. 

The  carriage  was,  in  fact,  filled  inside  and  out 
with  employes,  on  their  way,  doubtless,  to  relieve 
those  then  on  duty  on  the  salt  marshes. 

When  Calyste  reached  the  little  esplanade 
around  the  church  of  Saint-Nazaire,  from  which 
Paimbceuf  can  be  seen  and  the  majestic  mouth  of 
the  Loire  struggling  with  the  sea,  he  found  Camille 
and  the  marchioness  there  waving  their  handker- 
chiefs as  a  last  farewell  to  the  two  passengers  whom 
the  steamboat  was  bearing  away.  Beatrix  was  be- 
witching in  that  posture;  her  face  softened  by  the 
shadow  of  a  rice-straw  hat,  trimmed  with  poppies, 
and  secured  by  puce-colored  ribbons.  She  wore  a 
14 


210  BEATRIX 

dress  of  flowered  muslin,  her  tiny  little  foot  with  its 
green  gaiter  was  thrust  forward,  as  she  was  leaning 
upon  her  dainty  sun-umbrella  which  she  held  in  her 
lovely  gloved  hand.  Nothing  makes  a  grander  im- 
pression upon  the  eye  than  a  woman  standing  at  the 
summit  of  a  high  rock  like  a  statue  on  its  pedestal. 

Conti  could  see  Calyste  as  he  accosted  Camille. 

"I  thought,"  said  the  young  man,  "that  you 
^yould  be  driving  back  alone." 

"You  did  well,  Calyste,"  said  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches,  as  she  shook  hands  with  him. 

Beatrix  turned,  met  her  youthful  lover's  eye,  and 
bestowed  upon  him  the  most  imperious  glance  at 
her  command.  A  smile  which  the  marchioness  de- 
tected upon  Camille's  eloquent  lips,  brought  her  to 
a  realizing  sense  of  the  vulgarity  of  that  method, 
worthy  of  a  bourgeois  matron.  She  thereupon  said 
to  Calyste  with  a  smile : 

"Isn't  it  slightly  impertinent  of  you  to  imagine 
that  Camille  was  likely  to  be  bored  by  my  society  ?" 

"One  man  for  two  widows  is  none  too  many, 
my  dear,"  said  Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  taking 
Calyste's  arm  and  leaving  Beatrix  intently  watch- 
ing the  vessel. 

At  that  moment  Calyste  heard  the  voices  of  Ma- 
demoiselle de  Pen-Hoel,  Charlotte  and  Gasselin,  in 
the  steep  street  that  goes  down  to  what  we  must  call 
the  harbor  of  Saint-Nazaire,  all  three,  chattering  like 
magpies.  The  old  maid  was  questioning  Gasselin, 
trying  to  find  out  why  he  and  his  master  were  at 
Saint-Nazaire ;  Mademoiselle  des  Touches'  carriage 


BEATRIX  211 

aroused  her  suspicions.  Before  the  young  man 
could  withdraw,  Charlotte  had  caught  sight  of  him. 

"There's  Calyste!"  she  cried. 

"Go  and  offer  them  seats  in  my  carriage;  their 
maid  can  sit  beside  the  coachman,"  said  Camille, 
who  knew  that  Madame  de  Kergarouet  and  her 
daughter  and  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  had  failed 
to  obtain  seats  in  the  public  conveyance. 

Calyste,  who  had  no  choice  but  to  obey,  went  to 
deliver  his  message.  As  soon  as  she  realized  that 
she  was  to  travel  with  the  Marquise  de  Rochefide 
and  the  celebrated  Camille  Maupin,  Madame  de 
Kergarouet  refused  to  understand  the  significant 
pantomime  of  her  elder  sister,  who  was  reluctant  to 
avail  herself  of  what  she  called  the  devil's  carriage. 
At  Nantes,  civilization  was  a  little  more  advanced 
than  at  Guerande;  Camille  Maupin  was  admired 
there ;  she  was  looked  upon  as  the  muse  of  Bretagne 
and  an  honor  to  the  province ;  she  was  the  object  of 
as  much  curiosity  as  jealousy.  The  absolution  ac- 
corded at  Paris  by  society,  by  fashion,  was  con- 
firmed by  Mademoiselle  des  Touches'  great  fortune, 
and  perhaps  by  her  earlier  triumphs  at  Nantes, 
which  plumed  itself  upon  having  been  the  cradle  of 
Camille  Maupin.  And  so  the  viscountess,  wild 
with  curiosity,  drew  her  aged  sister  along,  without 
listening  to  her  jeremiads. 

"Good-morning,  Calyste,"  said  the  little  Ker- 
garouet 

"Good-morning,  Charlotte,"  Calyste  replied, 
neglecting  to  offer  her  his  arm. 


212  BEATRIX 

Sadly  embarrassed,  she,  by  his  cool  greeting,  he, 
by  his  own  cruelty,  they  ascended  together  the 
ravine  which  is  called  a  street  at  Saint-Nazaire, 
and  silently  followed  the  two  sisters. 

At  that  moment,  the  little  maiden  of  sixteen  saw 
the  castle  in  Spain,  built  and  furnished  by  her 
romantic  hopes,  crumbling  away  before  her  eyes. 
She  and  Calyste  had  played  together  so  often  in 
their  childhood,  she  was  on  such  intimate  terms 
with  him,  that  she  believed  her  future  to  be  unas- 
sailable. She  was  flying  along,  impelled  by  unre- 
flecting joy,  as  a  bird  soars  above  a  field  of  grain ; 
suddenly  her  flight  was  checked,  and  she  was 
utterly  unable  to  imagine  what  had  checked  it 

"What's  the  matter,  Calyste?"  she  asked,  taking 
his  hand. 

"Nothing,"  replied  the  young  man,  disengaging 
his  hand  with  unseemly  haste,  as  he  thought  of  his 
aunt's  and  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel's  projects. 

Tears  came  to  Charlotte's  eyes.  She  looked  at 
Calyste's  handsome  face  without  anger;  but  she 
was  soon  to  experience  her  first  thrill  of  jealousy 
and  to  feel  the  terrible  frenzy  of  a  rival,  at  the  sight 
of  the  two  lovely  Parisians,  and  the  resulting  sus- 
picion as  to  the  cause  of  Calyste's  coldness. 

Charlotte  de  Kergarouet  was  of  medium  height 
and  possessed  a  commonplace  freshness  of  coloring,  a 
small  round  face  enlivened  by  two  black  eyes  which 
played  at  understanding,  abundant  brown  hair,  a 
stout  figure,  flat  back,  thin  arms,  and  the  short,  de- 
cided speech  of  provincial  damsels  who  endeavor 


BEATRIX  213 

to  avoid  having  the  appearance  of  little  idiots.  She 
was  the  spoiled  child  of  the  family  because  of  her 
aunt's  predilection  for  her.  She  was  still  wearing 
the  Scotch  plaid  cloak,  lined  with  green  silk,  which 
she  had  worn  on  the  steamboat  Her  traveling 
dress,  of  very  ordinary  material,  made  with  a  chaste 
wimple  and  embellished  with  a  pleated  collerette^ 
would  seem  shocking  in  her  eyes  when  she  saw  the 
fresh,  airy  costumes  of  Beatrix  and  Camille.  She 
was  doomed  to  suffer  torments  because  she  had  on 
white  stockings,  soiled  by  leaping  from  the  cliffs 
into  the  boat,  and  wretched  kid  boots,  selected  ex- 
pressly to  avoid  spoiling  anything  nice  in  traveling, 
according  to  the  usages  and  customs  of  provincials. 
As  for  the  Vicomtesse  de  Kergarouet,  she  was  a 
perfect  type  of  the  provincial  great  lady.  Tall,  thin 
and  withered,  overflowing  with  hidden  pretensions 
which  never  showed  themselves  until  they  had  been 
wounded,  a  voluble  talker  and  by  dint  of  much  talk- 
ing, laying  hold  now  and  then  of  an  idea  or  two,  as 
one  scores  by  a  fluke  at  billiards,  thereby  gaining  a 
reputation  for  wit;  seeking  to  humiliate  Parisians 
by  the  affected  condescension  of  provincial  virtue 
and  by  constantly  putting  forward  a  non-existent 
happiness,  humbling  herself  to  be  raised  up,  and 
furious  if  she  were  left  upon  her  knees;  fishing  for 
compliments  with  a  line,  as  the  English  say,  and 
not  always  catching  them;  overdressed  and  slov- 
enly at  the  same  time,  taking  a  lack  of  affability  for 
impertinence,  and  fancying  that  she  embarrassed 
people  beyond  measure  by  paying  little  attention  to 


214  BEATRIX 

them ;  refusing  what  she  longed  for,  so  that  it  might 
be  offered  twice  and  that  she  might  have  the  air  of 
being  urged  beyond  measure ;  engrossed  with  mat- 
ters of  which  others  had  ceased  to  talk,  and  much 
amazed  to  find  that  she  was  not  abreast  of  the 
times ;  lastly,  finding  it  difficult  to  exist  an  hour  with- 
out referring  to  Nantes,  and  the  tigers  of  Nantes, 
and  the  affairs  of  the  first  society  of  Nantes,  and 
complaining  of  Nantes  and  criticizing  Nantes,  and 
taking  for  personal  affronts  the  remarks  made  in  a 
spirit  of  complaisance  by  those  who  absent-mindedly 
fell  in  with  her  opinions.  Her  manners,  her  lan- 
guage, her  ideas  had  infected  her  four  daughters 
more  or  less. 

To  know  Camille  Maupin  and  Madame  de  Roche- 
fide  would  furnish  her  with  material  for  a  hundred 
conversations  and  would  be  the  making  of  her  future ! 
— so  she  strode  on  toward  the  church  as  if  she  pro- 
posed to  carry  it  by  assault;  waving  her  handker- 
chief, which  she  unfolded  in  order  to  exhibit  the 
corners,  heavy  with  domestic  embroidery  and 
trimmed  with  wornout  lace.  She  had  a  decidedly 
masculine  gait,  but  in  a  woman  of  forty-seven  that 
was  of  little  consequence. 

"Monsieur  le  Chevalier,"  she  said  to  Camille  and 
Beatrix,  pointing  to  Calyste  who  was  coming  on 
behind,  gloomily  enough,  with  Charlotte — "Mon- 
sieur le  Chevalier  has  informed  us  of  your  courteous 
invitation;  but  my  sister  and  my  daughter  and  my- 
self fear  that  we  shall  incommode  you." 

"/certainly  shall  not  incommode  these  ladies," 

\ 


BEATRIX  215 

said  the  old  maid,  sourly,  "for  I  can  surely  find  a 
horse  in  Saint-Nazaire  to  take  me  home." 

Camille  and  Beatrix  exchanged  an  oblique  glance, 
detected  by  Calyste,  and  that  glance  was  sufficient 
to  destroy  all  his  childish  memories,  his  faith  in  the 
Kergarouet-Pen-Hoels,  and  to  shatter  forever  the 
plans  formed  by  the  two  families. 

"The  carriage  will  easily  hold  five,"  said  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches  upon  whom  Jacqueline  had 
turned  her  back.  "Even  if  we  should  be  terribly 
crowded — which  is  quite  impossible  on  account  of 
your  slender  figures — I  should  be  amply  repaid  by 
the  pleasure  of  accommodating  Calyste's  friends. 
Your  maid,  madame,  will  find  room  on  the  box;  and 
your  luggage,  if  you  have  any,  can  go  behind  the 
carriage,  as  I  brought  no  footman." 

The  viscountess  overwhelmed  her  with  thanks 
and  scolded  her  sister  Jacqueline  for  having  insisted 
upon  her  niece's  coming  in  such  a  hurry,  that  it 
was  impossible  for  her  to  come  in  her  own  carriage 
by  land;  to  be  sure,  the  journey  by  post  was  not 
only  long,  but  expensive;  she  must  return  at  once 
to  Nantes,  where  she  had  left  three  other  little  kit- 
tens impatiently  waiting  for  her,  she  said,  patting 
her  daughter's  neck.  Charlotte  thereupon  assumed 
the  air  of  a  martyr,  looking  up  into  her  mother's 
face  in  a  way  that  implied  that  the  viscountess 
drove  her  four  daughters  to  despair  by  bringing  them 
on  the  scene  as  often  as  Corporal  Trim  puts  on  his 
hat  in  Tristram  Shandy. 

"You  are  a  fortunate  mother,  and  you  must — " 


2l6  BEATRIX 

Camille  interrupted  herself,  reflecting  that  the  mar- 
chioness had  been  obliged  to  part  from  her  son  when 
she  went  with  Conti. 

*'Oh!  if  I  am  so  unfortunate  as  to  pass  my  life  in 
the  country  and  at  Nantes,"  rejoined  the  viscount- 
ess, "I  have  the  consolation  of  knowing  that  my 
children  adore  me.  Have  you  any  children  ?"  she 
asked  Camille. 

"1  am  Mademoiselle  des  Touches,"  she  replied. 
"Madame  is  the  Marquise  de  Rochefide." 

"You  are  to  be  pitied  then  because  you  do  not 
know  the  greatest  happiness  in  the  world  to  us  poor, 
commonplace  wives,  is  she  not,  madame?"  said  the 
viscountess  to  the  marchioness,  to  repair  her  error. 
"But  you  have  so  many  compensations!" 

A  hot  tear  came  to  Beatrix's  eyes,  and  she  turned 
abruptly  and  walked  to  the  massive,  rocky  parapet, 
whither  Caiyste  followed  her. 

"Madame,"  said  Camille  in  the  viscountess's  ear, 
"aren't  you  aware  that  the  marchioness  lives  apart 
from  her  husband,  that  she  has  not  seen  her  son  for 
two  years,  and  has  no  idea  when  she  will  see  him 
again  ?" 

"Ah !"  said  Madame  de  Kergarouet,  "poor  woman ! 
Is  it  a  judicial  separation?" 

"No,  incompatibility,"  said  Camille. 

"Indeed,  I  can  understand  that,"  said  the  vis- 
countess, bravely. 

Old  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel,  in  despair  at  find- 
ing herself  in  the  hostile  camp,  had  intrenched  her- 
self a  few  steps  away  with  her  dear  Charlotte. 


BEATRIX  217 

Calyste,  after  looking  about  to  see  if  anyone 
could  see  them,  seized  the  marchioness's  hand  and 
kissed  it,  leaving  a  tear  upon  it  Beatrix  turned, 
her  own  tears  dried  by  indignation;  she  was  about 
to  hurl  some  withering  phrase  at  him,  but  could 
summon  no  harsh  words  to  her  lips  when  she  found 
her  own  tears  reflected  upon  the  angelic  face  of 
the  young  man,  who  was  as  deeply  wounded  as 
herself. 

**Mon  D/^«, Calyste, "  said  Camille  in  his  ear,  as 
he  returned  with  Madame  de  Rochefide,  "you  would 
have  her  for  a  mother-in-law,  and  that  little  goose 
for  a  wife! 

"Because  her  aunt  is  rich,"  said  Calyste,  ironi- 
cally. 

The  whole  party  started  for  the  inn,  and  the  vis- 
countess felt  called  upon  to  favor  Camille  with  a 
satire  upon  the  savages  of  Saint-Nazaire. 

"I  love  Bretagne,  madame,"  replied  Camille 
gravely;  "I  was  born  at  Guerande. " 

Calyste  could  but  admire  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches ;  her  voice,  her  manner  and  her  calm  glance 
made  him  feel  so  entirely  at  ease,  notwithstanding 
the  astounding  disclosures  during  the  scene  of  the 
preceding  night  She  seemed  a  little  fatigued,  how- 
ever: her  features  showed  signs  of  sleeplessness, 
they  seemed  to  have  grown  coarser,  as  it  were,  but 
the  stern  placidity  of  the  brow  dominated  the  tem- 
pest that  raged  within. 

"What  queenly  creatures!"  said  Calyste  to  Char- 
lotte, pointing  to  the  marchioness  and  Camille,  and 


2l8  BEATRIX 

offering  the  young  woman  his  arm,  to  Mademoiselle 
dePen-Hoel's  great  satisfaction. 

"What  put  it  into  your  mother's  head,"  said  the 
old  maid,  also  offering  her  niece  her  attenuated 
arm,  "to  force  herself  into  that  shameless  woman's 
company?" 

"Oh!  aunt,  a  woman  who  is  the  glory  of 
Bretagne!" 

"The  shame,  little  one.  Do  you  propose  to  make 
up  to  her  too.?" 

"Mademoiselle  Charlotte  is  right,  you  are  not 
fair,"  said  Calyste. 

"Oh!"  retorted  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel,  "she 
has  bewitched  you." 

"1  have  the  same  friendship  for  her  as  for  you," 
said  Calyste. 

"Since  when  have  the  Du  Guenics  been  liars.?" 
said  the  old  maid. 

"Since  the  Pen-Hoels  became  deaf,"  Calyste 
retorted. 

"You  aren't  in  love  with  her,  are  you.?"  queried 
the  delighted  old  maid. 

"I  have  been,  but  I  am  not  now,"  he  replied. 

"Bad  boy!  why  have  you  caused  us  so  much 
anxiety?  I  know  that  love  is  all  foolishness; 
there's  nothing  solid  but  marriage,"  she  said, 
glancing  at  Charlotte. 

Charlotte,  somewhat  consoled,  hoped  to  be  able 
to  regain  her  advantage  by  laying  stress  upon  all 
the  incidents  of  their  childhood,  and  she  squeezed 
Calyste's  arm,  thereby  causing  him  to  make  up  his 


BEATRIX  219 

mind  to  have  a  clear  understanding  with  the  little 
heiress. 

"Ah!  what  fine  games  oi  mouche  we  will  have, 
Calyste, "  she  said,  "and  how  we  will  laugh!" 

The  horses  were  harnessed,  and  Camille  placed 
the  viscountess  and  Charlotte  on  the  back  seat,  for 
Jacqueline  had  disappeared;  then  she  seated  her- 
self beside  the  marchioness  on  the  front  seat 
Calyste,  compelled  to  renounce  the  pleasure  he  had 
anticipated,  rode  beside  the  carriage,  and  the  tired 
horses  went  so  slowly  that  he  was  able  to  gaze  at 
Beatrix  to  his  heart's  content 

History  does  not  record  the  interesting  conversa- 
tion of  the  four  persons  whom  chance  had  so  singu- 
larly brought  together  in  that  carriage,  for  it  is 
impossible  to  admit  the  accuracy  of  the  hundred 
and  one  versions  current  at  Nantes  concerning  the 
stories,  the  repartees,  the  bright  sayings  which  the 
viscountess  heard  from  the  famous  Camille 
Maupin's  own  lips.  She  was  very  careful  not  to 
repeat,  or  indeed  to  understand  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches'  answers  to  the  impertinent  questions  to 
which  authors  are  so  often  compelled  to  listen,  and 
which  force  them  to  pay  cruelly  for  their  infrequent 
pleasures. 

"How  did  you  write  your  books?"  the  viscount- 
ess asked. 

"Why,  as  you  do  your  woman's  work,  netting  or 
tapestry,"  replied  Camille. 

"And  where  did  you  get  such  profound  observa- 
tions, such  fascinating  pictures?" 


220  BEATRIX 

"Where  you  get  the  clever  things  you  say,  ma- 
dame.  There's  nothing  so  easy  as  to  write,  and  if 
you  wished — " 

"What!  the  whole  thing  consists  in  wishing?  I 
wouldn't  have  believed  it!  Which  one  of  your 
works  do  you  prefer?" 

"It  is  very  difficult  to  have  preferences  among 
such  trifles." 

"You  are  surfeited  with  compliments,  and  one 
can  think  of  nothing  new  to  say  to  you." 

"Believe,  madame,  that  I  am  very  grateful  for 
the  shape  you  give  to  yours." 

The  viscountess  was  anxious  not  to  seem  to  slight 
the  marchioness,  and  said,  looking  at  her  with  a 
knowing  expression: 

"1  shall  never  forget  this  drive  between  wit  and 
beauty." 

"You  flatter  me,  madame,"  laughed  the  marchion- 
ess; "it  is  not  natural  to  notice  wit  in  the  presence 
of  genius,  and  I  have  said  nothing  of  importance  as 
yet." 

Charlotte  who  was  keenly  conscious  of  the  absurd 
figure  cut  by  her  mother,  looked  at  her  as  if  to  stop 
her,  but  the  viscountess  continued  to  maintain  a 
gallant  struggle  with  the  two  laughing  Parisians. 

The  young  man,  as  he  trotted  beside  the  caliche 
at  a  slow,  careless  gait,  could  see  only  the  two 
women  who  were  sitting  with  their  backs  to  the 
horses,  and  his  eyes  wandered  from  one  to  the  other, 
betraying  painful  thoughts.  Beatrix,  although  she 
was  compelled  to  allow  herself  to   be   looked  at, 


BEATRIX  221 

persistently  avoided  the  young  man's  gaze;  by  a 
manoeuvre  calculated  to  drive  a  lover  to  despair,  she 
kept  her  shawl  crossed  under  her  clasped  hands,  and 
seemed  absorbed  in  profound  meditation.  At  a  spot 
where  the  road  is  shady  and  cool  and  green,  like  a 
lovely  forest  path ;  where  the  sound  of  the  wheels 
could  scarcely  be  heard,  where  the  leaves  brushed 
against  their  hats,  where  the  air  was  laden  with 
balsamic  odors,  Camille  called  attention  to  the  har- 
monious beauties  of  the  landscape,  and  placed  her 
hand  upon  Beatrix's  knee,  pointing  to  Calyste. 

"How  well  he  rides!"  she  said. 

**Calyste.?"  said  the  viscountess.  "He's  a  lovely 
horseman." 

"Oh!  Calyste  is  a  very  nice  boy,"  said  Char- 
lotte. 

"There  are  so  many  Englishmen  like  him!"  re- 
joined the  marchioness  indolently,  leaving  her  sen- 
tence unfinished. 

"His  mother  is  Irish,  an  O'Brien,"  said  Char- 
lotte, taking  the  remark  as  a  personal  attack  upon 
herself. 

Camille  and  the  marchioness  drove  intoGuerande 
with  Vicomtesse  de  Kergarouet  and  her  daughter, 
to  the  vast  astonishment  of  the  whole  thunderstruck 
town;  they  set  down  their  traveling  companions  at 
the  entrance  to  the  Du  Guenic  lane,  where  there 
was  a  concourse  of  people  that  lacked  but  little  of 
being  a  crowd. 

Calyste  had  ridden  on  before  to  advise  his  aunt 
and  mother  of  the  arrival  of  these  unexpected  guests 


222  BEATRIX 

to  dine  with  them.  The  meal  was  postponed  by 
common  consent  until  four  o'clock.  The  chevalier 
returned  to  assist  the  two  ladies  to  alight;  then  he 
kissed  Camille's  hand,  hoping  to  be  able  to  touch 
Madame  de  Rochefide's,  but  she  sternly  kept  her 
arms  folded,  although  he  entreated  her  most 
earnestly  with  eyes  that  were  wet  with  tears  to  no 
purpose. 

"Little  idiot,"  said  Camille,  touching  his  ear 
with  a  friendly  kiss. 

"That  is  true  enough,"  said  Calyste  to  himself, 
as  the  carriage  was  turning;  "I  forgot  my  mother's 
advice;  but  I  fancy  that  I  shall  always  forget  it" 


Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  having  made  her  ap- 
pearance, bravely  mounted  on  a  hired  horse,  Vicom- 
tesse  de  Kergarouet  and  Charlotte  found  the  table 
laid  and  were  welcomed  with  cordiality,  if  not  with 
splendor,  by  the  Du  Guenics.  Old  Zephirine  had 
indicated  the  hiding  place  of  certain  choice  wines, 
in  the  depths  of  the  cellar,  and  Mariotte  surpassed 
herself  in  the  preparation  of  her  Breton  dishes. 

The  viscountess,  enchanted  to  have  made  the 
journey  with  the  illustrious  Camille  Maupin,  tried 
to  describe  modern  literature  and  Camille's  place 
therein;  but  it  was  with  the  literary  world  as  with 
whist:  neither  the  Du  Guenics,  nor  the  cure  who 
arrived  in  due  course,  nor  the  Chevalier  du  Halga, 
understood  it  in  the  least 

Abbe  Grimont  and  the  old  sailor  partook  of  the 
liqueurs  served  with  the  dessert.  As  soon  as 
Mariotte,  assisted  by  Gasselin  and  by  the  viscount- 
ess's maid,  had  removed  the  dishes,  there  was  an 
enthusiastic  demand  for  a  game  of  moitche.  Joy 
reigned  in  the  household.  All  believed  Calyste  to 
be  free  from  entanglement  and  fancied  him  already 
married  to  little  Charlotte.  Calyste  said  not  a 
word.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life,  he  was  drawing 
comparisons  between  the  Kergarouets  and  the  two 
fashionable,  clever  women,  of  refined  tastes,  who  at 
that  moment  were  probably  making  sport  of  the  two 
(223) 


224  BEATRIX 

provincials,  if  one  might  judge  from  the  first  glance 
they  had  exchanged. 

Fanny,  who  knew  Calyste's  secret,  noticed  her 
son's  depression,  and  that  Charlotte's  cajoleries  and 
the  viscountess's  attacks  had  little  effect  upon  him. 
Evidently  her  dear  boy  was  bored ;  his  body  was  in 
that  room,  where  in  the  old  days  he  would  have  en- 
joyed the  pleasantries  of  the  mouche,  but  his  mind 
was  wandering  away  to  Les  Touches.  "How  can  I 
send  him  to  Camille?"  the  mother  asked  herself, 
for  she  sympathized  with  her  son,  who  was  in  love 
and  was  bored  at  home.  Her  aroused  affection 
made  her  unusually  bright. 

"You  are  dying  to  go  to  Les  Touches  to  see  her, 
aren't  you?"  she  said  in  Calyste's  ear. 

The  boy  answered  with  a  smile  and  a  blush 
which  penetrated  to  the  lowest  depths  of  that  ador- 
able mother's  heart 

"Madame,"  said  she  to  the  viscountess,  "you 
will  be  very  uncomfortable  in  the  carrier's  wagon 
to-morrow,  and  you  will  be  compelled  to  start  very 
early  too;  wouldn't  it  be  better  for  you  to  take  Ma- 
demoiselle des  Touches'  carriage? — Go  to  Les 
Touches  and  make  that  arrangement,  Calyste," 
she  said,  turning  to  her  son;  "but  come  back  to  us 
at  once." 

"It  won't  take  me  ten  minutes,"  cried  Calyste, 
and  he  wildly  kissed  his  mother  on  the  stoop, 
whither  she  followed  him. 

Calyste  ran  like  a  deer  and  was  in  the  peristyle 
at  Les  Touches  when  Camille  and  Beatrix  came  out 


BEATRIX  225 

of  the  large  salon  after  dinner.  He  had  sufficient 
presence  of  mind  to  offer  his  arm  to  Camille. 

"You  have  doserted  the  viscountess  and  her 
daughter  for  us,"  said  she,  pressing  his  arm;  "we 
are  able  now  to  realize  the  full  extent  of  the  sac- 
rifice." 

"Are  these  Kergarouets  connected  with  the  Por- 
tendu^res  and  old  Admiral  de  Kergarouet,  whose 
widow  married  Charles  de  Vandenesse .?"  Madame 
de  Rochefide  asked  Camille. 

"Mademoiselle  Charlotte  is  the  admiral's  grand- 
niece,"  was  the  reply. 

"She's  a  charming  girl,"  said  Beatrix,  posing  in 
a  gothic  armchair;  "Monsieur  du  Guenic  is  inter- 
ested there,  I  fancy." 

"The  marriage  will  never  take  place,"  said 
Camille,  quickly. 

Crushed  by  the  marchioness's  cold,  calm  manner, 
as  she  indicated  the  little  Breton  girl  as  the  only 
creature  with  whom  he  could  cast  in  his  lot, 
Calyste  sat  without  voice  or  mind. 

"Why  so,  Camille.?"  said  Madame  de  Rochefide. 

"My  dear,"  replied  Camille,  noticing  Calyste's 
despair,  "I  didn't  advise  Conti  to  marry  and  I 
thought  I  was  delightful  to  him;  you  are  not  gen- 
erous." 

Beatrix  gazed  at  her  friend  in  amazement, 
mingled  with  indefinable  suspicions.  Calyste 
almost  understood  Camille's  devotion  when  he  saw 
upon  her  pale  cheeks  the  faint  flush  that  always 
denoted  that  her  most  violent  emotions  were 
15 


226  BEATRIX 

aroused;  he  walked  awkwardly  to  where  she  sat, 
took  her  hand  and  kissed  it.  Camille  sat  carelessly- 
down  at  the  piano,  as  if  she  were  sure  of  her  friend 
and  of  the  adorer  whom  she  appropriated  to  herself, 
turning  her  back  upon  them  and  leaving  them  to  all 
intents  alone.  She  improvised  variations  upon 
themes  selected  by  her  mind  without  volition,  for 
they  were  excessively  melancholy.  The  marchion- 
ess seemed  to  be  listening,  but  she  had  her  eye  upon 
Calyste,  who,  being  too  young  and  artless  to  play 
the  part  Camille  assigned  him,  sat  in  a  sort  of 
ecstasy  before  his  veritable  idol.  After  an  hour, 
during  which  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  gave  full 
vent  to  her  jealousy  in  the  most  natural  way, 
Beatrix  retired.  Camille  at  once  ushered  Calyste 
into  her  bedroom,  in  order  not  to  be  overheard,  for 
women  have  a  wonderfully  accurate  suspicious 
instinct. 

"My  child,"  said  she,  "make  a  pretence  of  being 
in  love  with  me  or  you  are  lost.  You  are  a  mere 
boy,  you  know  nothing  whatever  of  women;  you 
simply  know  how  to  love.  To  love  and  to  win  love 
for  one's  self  are  two  very  different  things.  You 
are  doomed  to  suffer  horribly  and  I  long  to  see  you 
happy.  If  you  do  not  touch  Beatrix's  pride,  but 
arouse  her  obstinacy,  she  is  quite  capable  of  taking 
flight  to  some  place  within  a  few  miles  of  Paris,  to 
be  near  Conti.     What  would  become  of  you  then?" 

"I  should  still  love  her,"  Calyste  replied. 

"You  will  not  see  her  again." 

"Oh!  yes,"  said  he. 


BEATRIX  227 

*'Howso?" 

"I  will  follow  her." 

"But  you  are  as  poor  as  Job,  my  child!" 

"My  father  andGasselin  and  I  lived  three  months 
in  Vendee  with  a  hundred  and  fifty  francs,  travel- 
ing day  and  night." 

"Calyste,"  said  Mademoiselle  des  Touches, 
"mark  well  what  1  say.  I  see  that  you  have  too 
much  sincerity  to  pretend,  1  do  not  wish  to  corrupt 
such  a  lovely  nature  as  yours,  so  I  take  everything 
upon  myself.     Beatrix  shall  love  you." 

"Is  it  possible?"  said  he,  clasping  his  hands. 

"Yes,"  Camille  replied,  "but  we  must  overcome 
the  engagements  she  has  entered  into  with  herself. 
I  will  therefore,  tell  lies  for  you. 

"Do  not  you  interfere  in  the  very  arduous  task  I 
propose  to  undertake.  The  marchioness  possesses  an 
aristocratic  delicacy  of  perception,  she  is  suspicious 
in  an  intelligent  way ;  never  did  hunter  fall  in  with 
game  more  difficult  to  catch;  in  this  case,  therefore, 
my  poor  boy,  the  hunter  must  listen  to  his  dog.  Do 
you  promise  to  obey  me  blindly.?  I  will  be  your 
Fox,"  she  added,  assuming  the  name  of  Calyste's 
favorite  greyhound. 

"What  must  I  do.?"  the  young  man  inquired. 

"Very  little,"  replied  Camille.  "You  must  come 
here  every  day,  about  noon.  I  will  stand,  like  an 
impatient  mistress,  at  the  window  in  the  corridor 
which  overlooks  the  Guerande  road,  watching  for 
your  coming.  I  will  run  away  into  my  bedroom  in 
order  not  to  be  seen,  and  not  to  show  you  the  extent 


228  BEATRIX 

of  a  passion  which  is  a  burden  to  you ;  but  you  will 
see  me  once  in  a  while  and  will  wave  your  hand- 
kerchief to  me.  As  you  cross  the  courtyard  and 
come  up  the  stairs,  you  will  act  as  if  you  were  hor- 
ribly bored.  That  will  not  require  much  dissimu- 
lation, my  boy,  will  it?"  she  said,  throwing  her 
head  forward  on  her  bosom.  "You  will  walk 
slowly,  you  will  look  through  the  hall  window  that 
opens  on  the  garden,  trying  to  see  Beatrix.  When 
she  is  there — and  she  shall  walk  there,  never  fear ! 
— if  she  sees  you,  you  will  rush  into  the  small  salon 
and  thence  into  my  bedroom.  If  you  see  me  at  the 
window  spying  upon  your  treacherous  behavior,  you 
will  hastily  dart  back,  so  that  I  may  not  surprise 
you  begging  for  a  look  from  Beatrix.  Once  in  my 
bedroom,  you  will  be  my  prisoner. — Ah!  we  will 
remain  here  together  until  four  o'clock.  You  will 
employ  the  time  in  reading  and  I  in  smoking;  you 
will  be  sadly  depressed  at  not  seeing  her,  but  I  will 
supply  you  with  exciting  books.  You  have  read 
nothing  of  George  Sand's;  I  will  send  one  of  my 
people  to  Nantes  to-night  to  purchase  her  works  and 
those  of  some  other  authors  whom  you  do  not  know. 
I  will  go  out  of  the  room  first  and  you  will  not  put 
aside  your  book,  you  will  not  come  into  my  little 
salon  until  you  hear  Beatrix  talking  with  me. 
Whenever  you  see  a  book  of  music  open  on  the 
piano,  you  can  ask  my  permission  to  remain.  I 
give  you  leave  to  be  rude  to  me,  if  you  can ;  all  will 
go  well." 

"I  know  that  your  affection  for  me  is  most  rare, 


BEATRIX  229 

Camille,  and  it  makes  me  regret  having  seen 
Beatrix,"  he  said  with  charming  frankness;  "but 
what  do  you  hope  to  accomplish?" 

"In  a  week,  Beatrix  will  be  mad  over  you." 

"Mon  Dieu!*'  can  it  be  possible?"  he  exclaimed, 
falling  on  his  knees  and  clasping  his  hands  at  the 
feet  of  Camille,  who  was  deeply  moved  though 
happy  to  bestow  pleasure  upon  him  at  her  own  ex- 
pense. 

"Listen  to  me  carefully,"  said  she.  "If  you 
speak  with  the  marchioness — I  do  not  refer  to  a  long 
conversation,  but  if  you  exchange  only  a  few  words 
with  her — if  you  allow  her  to  question  you,  if  you 
depart  from  the  silent  r61e  I  assign  to  you,  which  is 
certainly  a  simple  one  to  play,  understand  clearly," 
said  she  solemnly,  "you  will  lose  her  forever." 

"I  do  not  at  all  understand  what  you  say,  Ca- 
mille," cried  Calyste,  gazing  into  her  face  with 
adorable  ingenuousness. 

"If  you  did  understand,  you  would  not  be  the 
sublime  child,  the  noble,  beautiful  Calyste  that 
you  are,"  she  replied,  taking  his  hand  and  kiss- 
ing it 

Thereupon,  Calyste  did  what  he  had  never  done 
before — he  put  his  arm  around  Camille's  waist  and 
kissed  her  softly  on  the  neck,  without  love,  but 
with  deep  affection,  as  he  was  accustomed  to  kiss 
his  mother.  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  could  not 
restrain  a  torrent  of  tears. 

"Go  now,  my  child,  and  tell  your  viscountess 
that  my  carriage  is  at  her  service." 


230  BEATRIX 

Calyste  wanted  to  stay,  but  he  was  constrained 
to  obey  Camille's  imperative  and  imperious  gesture ; 
lie  returned  home  in  joyous  mood,  for  he  was  sure 
of  being  beloved  within  the  week  by  the  fair  Roche- 
fide.  The  monche  players  once  more  found  in  him 
the  Calyste  they  had  lost  two  months  before. 
Charlotte  assumed  the  credit  for  this  transforma- 
tion. Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  was  charmingly 
playful  with  Calyste.  Abbe  Grimont  tried  to  read 
in  the  baroness's  eyes  the  explanation  of  the  tran- 
quillity he  saw  therein.  The  Chevalier  du  Halga 
rubbed  his  hands.  The  two  old  maids  were  as 
vivacious  as  two  lizards.  The  viscountess  owed  a 
hundred  sous'  worth  of  accumulated  mouches.  Ze- 
phirine's  cupidity  was  so  keenly  aroused  that  she 
regretted  her  inability  to  see  the  cards,  and  dis- 
charged a  few  sharp  words  at  her  sister-in-law, 
whose  attention  was  diverted  by  Calyste's  evident 
happiness  and  who  questioned  him  from  time  to 
time,  but  was  utterly  unable  to  understand  his 
replies. 

The  game  lasted  until  eleven  o'clock.  There  were 
two  desertions;  the  baron  and  the  chevalier  fell 
asleep  in  their  respective  chairs.  Mariotte  had 
made  some  buckwheat  cakes  and  the  baroness  went 
to  fetch  her  tea-caddy.  The  illustrious  house  of  Du 
Guenic,  before  the  departure  of  the  Kergarouets  and 
Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel,  served  a  collation  com- 
posed of  fresh  butter,  fruits  and  cream,  for  which 
the  silver  teapot  and  the  English  porcelain  sent  to 
the  baroness  by  one  of  her  aunts  were  produced  from 


BEATRIX  231 

the  chest  This  simulacrum  of  modern  splendor  in 
that  ancient  hall  and  the  exquisite  grace  of  the  baron- 
ess, who  was  brought  up  in  the  good  old  Irish  fashion 
to  make  and  serve  tea  which  is  so  highly  esteemed 
by  Englishwomen,  made  a  charming  picture.  The 
most  unstinted  luxury  would  not  have  produced  the 
simple,  modest  and  noble  effect  resulting  from  this 
sentiment  of  joyous  hospitality.  When  the  baroness 
and  her  son  were  left  alone  in  the  room,  she  looked 
at  Calyste  with  an  expression  of  curiosity. 

"What  happened  at  Les  Touches  to-night?"  she 
inquired. 

Calyste  told  her  of  the  hope  Cam i lie  had  im- 
planted in  his  heart  and  of  her  strange  instructions. 

"The  poor  woman!"  cried  the  baroness,  clasping 
her  hands  and  sympathizing  with  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches  for  the  first  time. 

A  few  moments  after  Calyste's  departure,  Beatrix, 
who  had  heard  him  leave  the  house,  returned  to  her 
friend,  whom  she  found,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  half 
reclining  on  a  sofa. 

"What  is  it,  Felicite?"  she  asked. 

"lam  forty  years  old  and  I  am  in  love,  my  dear!" 
said  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  in  a  horrifying  tone 
of  frenzied  excitement,  her  eyes  suddenly  becoming 
dry  and  gleaming.  "If  you  knew,  Beatrix,  how 
many  tears  I  shed  over  the  wasted  days  of  my 
youth!  To  be  loved  from  pity,  to  know  that  you 
owe  your  happiness  only  to  painful  struggles,  to 
cat-like  cunning,  to  snares  laid  to  entrap  the  inno- 
cence and  virtue  of  a  child — is  it  not  infamous.? 


232  BEATRIX 

Happily  at  such  times  you  find  absolution  in  the 
boundless  extent  of  your  passion,  in  the  enthusiasm 
of  happiness,  in  the  certainty  of  being  forever  above 
all  other  women  by  engraving  your  image  in  a 
youthful  heart  by  means  of  pleasures  that  cannot  be 
effaced,  by  insensate  devotion.  Yes,  if  he  should 
ask  me  to  do  it,  I  would  throw  myself  into  the  sea 
at  a  signal  from  him.  At  times  I  surprise  myself 
wishing  that  he  would  ask  me  to  do  it — it  would  be 
a  votive  offering,  not  a  suicide. — Ah!  Beatrix,  you 
set  me  a  hard  task  by  coming  here.  I  know  how 
difficult  it  is  to  triumph  over  you;  but  you  love 
Conti,  you  are  noble  and  generous,  and  you  will 
not  deceive  me ;  on  the  contrary,  you  will  help  me 
to  retain  my  Calyste.  I  anticipated  the  impression 
you  would  make  upon  him,  but  I  did  not  make  the 
mistake  of  exhibiting  my  jealousy,  for  that  would 
be  to  add  fuel  to  the  flame.  On  the  contrary,  1  told 
him  of  your  coming  and  described  you  in  such  vivid 
colors  that  you  could  never  realize  the  expectations 
aroused  by  the  portrait,  but,  to  my  undoing,  you 
have  grown  more  beautiful." 

This  vehement  lament,  wherein  truth  and  decep- 
tion were  mingled,  misled  Madame  de  Rochefide 
completely.  Claude  Vignon  had  told  Conti  his 
reasons  for  leaving  Les  Touches,  so  that  Beatrix 
was  naturally  informed  concerning  them  and  showed 
a  generous  spirit  by  her  cold  demeanor  to  Calyste; 
but,  at  that  moment,  she  felt  the  thrill  of  joy  that 
vibrates  at  the  bottom  of  every  woman's  heart  when 
she   knows  that  she    is   beloved.      The   love  she 


BEATRIX  233 

inspires  in  a  man  means  flattery  without  hypocrisy, 
and  it  is  difficult  not  to  enjoy  it;  but  when  that 
man  belongs  to  her  friend,  his  homage  causes  some- 
thing more  than  joy,  it  causes  celestial  bliss. 
Beatrix  sat  down  beside  her  friend  and  began  to 
coax  and  cajole  her. 

"You  haven't  a  single  white  hair,"  she  said, 
"you  haven't  a  wrinkle,  your  temples  are  still 
smooth,  whereas  I  know  more  than  one  woman  of 
thirty  who  is  obliged  to  cover  hers.  Look,  my 
dear,"  said  she,  raising  her  curls,  "see  what  my 
journey  has  cost  me!" 

The  marchioness  pointed  to  the  almost  impercep- 
tible traces  of  fatigue  on  her  soft,  fine-grained  skin; 
she  turned  back  her  sleeves  and  exhibited  similar 
traces  on  her  wrists,  where  the  transparent  tissue, 
already  roughened,  showed  the  network  of  swollen 
veins,  where  three  deep  lines  made  a  bracelet  of 
wrinkles. 

"Isn't  it  true,  as  a  writer  who  is  in  the  secret  of 
our  little  wiles  has  said,  that  those  are  the  two 
places  that  tell  no  lies?"  said  she.  "One  must 
have  suffered  cruelly  to  appreciate  the  truth  of  his 
brutal  remark;  but,  luckily  for  us,  most  men  know 
nothing  about  it,  and  don't  read  that  infamous 
author." 

"Your  letter  told  me  the  whole  story,"  Camille 
replied;  "happiness  knows  nothing  of  conceit,  and 
you  boasted  of  your  happiness  too  much  to  be  really 
happy.  In  love,  is  not  truth  deaf  and  dumb  and 
blind.?    And  so,  knowing  that  you  have  abundant 


234  BEATRIX 

reason  to  leave  Conti,  I  fear  the  results  of  your 
visit  here.  My  dear,  Calyste  is  an  angel ;  he  is  as 
good  as  he  is  handsome,  and  the  poor,  innocent  child 
will  not  offer  the  least  resistance  to  a  single  glance 
from  your  eyes;  he  admires  you  too  much  not  to 
love  you  upon  the  slightest  encouragement;  your 
disdain  will  preserve  him  to  me.  I  confess,  with 
the  cowardice  of  true  passion,  that  to  take  him  from 
me  would  be  to  kill  me.  Adolphe,  Benjamin  Con- 
stant's ghastly  book,  describes  Adolphe's  sufferings, 
does  it  not,  and  not  his  wife's.?  Ah!  he  hasn't 
watched  them  closely  enough  to  describe  them;  and 
what  woman  would  dare  describe  them  to  him.? 
they  would  dishonor  our  sex,  they  would  degrade 
its  virtues  and  exalt  its  vices.  Ah!  if  I  justly 
measure  them  by  my  fears,  those  sufferings  must 
resemble  the  torments  of  hell.  But  in  case  he 
deserts  me,  my  mind  is  made  up." 

"What  have  you  decided  to  do.?"  queried  Beatrix 
with  an  eagerness  that  made  Camille  shudder. 

At  that  point  the  two  friends  gazed  at  each  other 
with  the  intentness  of  two  Venetian  state  inquisi- 
tors; their  eyes  met  in  a  swift  glance  in  which 
their  hearts  collided  and  struck  fire  like  two  flints. 
The  marchioness  looked  down. 

"After  man,  God  alone  remains,"  replied  the  cel- 
ebrated author  solemnly.  "God  is  the  unknown. 
I  shall  hurl  myself  into  it  as  into  an  abyss.  Calyste 
just  gave  me  his  word  that  he  admires  you  only  as 
one  admires  a  picture;  but,  at  twenty-eight,  you 
are  in  all  the  splendor  of  your  beauty.    The  struggle 


BEATRIX  235 

between  him  and  myself  has  begun  with  a  lie  there- 
fore. Luckily,  I  know  how  to  set  to  work  to  ensure 
my  triumphs." 

"What  will  you  do.?" 

*'That  is  my  secret,  my  dear.  Leave  me  what- 
ever advantage  my  age  gives  me.  If  Claude  Vignon 
has  brutally  cast  me  into  an  abyss — me,  who  had 
raised  myself  to  a  height  I  deemed  inaccessible — I 
will,  at  all  events,  pluck  all  the  pale  flowers,  droop- 
ing but  sweet,  that  grow  at  the  foot  of  precipices." 

The  marchioness  was  moulded  like  a  piece  of  wax 
by  Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  who  took  a  savage 
delight  in  enveloping  her  in  her  wiles.  She  dis- 
missed her  friend,  devoured  with  curiosity,  waver- 
ing between  jealousy  and  generosity,  but  with  her 
mind  unquestionably  filled  with  the  comely  Calyste. 

"She  will  enjoy  deceiving  me  beyond  all  things," 
said  Camille  to  herself  as  they  exchanged  their 
good-night  kiss. 

But  when  she  was  alone,  the  authoress  gave  place 
to  the  woman;  she  burst  into  tears;  she  filled  the 
bowl  of  her  hookah  with  tobacco  soaked  in  opium, 
and  passed  the  greater  part  of  the  night  in  smoking, 
benumbing  in  this  way  the  pangs  of  her  love,  and 
seeing  Calyste's  lovely  head  through  the  clouds  of 
smoke. 

"What  a  fine  book  I  could  write  by  telling  the 
story  of  my  sorrows!"  she  said  to  herself;  "but  the 
die  is  cast  Sappho  lived  before  me,  but  Sappho 
was  young.  What  a  beautiful  and  touching  heroine 
is  a  woman  of  forty  years,  in  very  truth !    Smoke 


236  BEATRIX 

your  hookah,  my  poor  Camille;  you  haven't  even 
the  resource  of  bewailing  your  woes  in  poetry;  they 
are  beyond  words!" 

She  did  not  retire  until  just  before  dawn,  inter- 
larding with  tears  and  bitter  ejaculations  and  sub- 
lime resolutions,  the  long  meditation,  during  which 
she  thought  at  intervals  of  the  mysteries  of  the 
Catholic  religion,  a  subject  to  which,  as  heedless 
artist  and  sceptical  writer,  she  had  never  given  a 
thought  in  her  whole  life. 


The  next  day  Calyste,  whom  his  mother  had  ad- 
vised to  follow  Camille's  instructions  to  the  letter, 
came  at  noon  and  ascended  mysteriously  to  Ca- 
mille's bedroom,  where  he  found  books  awaiting 
him.  Felicite  remained  in  an  easy-chair  at  the 
window,  smoking,  gazing  by  turns  at  the  wild 
waste  of  marshes,  at  the  sea,  and  at  Calyste,  with 
whom  she  exchanged  a  few  words  concerning 
Beatrix.  At  one  time,  seeing  the  marchioness 
walking  in  the  garden,  she  unfastened  the  curtains, 
allowing  her  friend  to  catch  sight  of  her  as  she  did 
it,  and  drew  them  together  to  shut  out  the  light,  ad- 
mitting only  a  single  beam,  which  fell  upon  Calyste's 
book. 

"To-day,  my  child,  I  will  ask  you  to  remain  to 
dinner,"  she  said,  running  her  hands  through  his 
hair,  "and  you  will  refuse,  but  you  will  look  at  the 
marchioness  and  will  have  no  difificulty  in  making 
her  understand  how  much  you  regret  your  inability 
to  remain." 

About  four  o'clock  Camille  left  the  room,  to  play 
the  atrocious  comedy  of  her  pretended  bliss  with 
the  marchioness,  whom  she  brought  to  her  salon. 
Calyste  thereupon  came  out  of  the  bedroom ;  at  that 
moment,  he  realized  his  degrading  position.  The 
glance  which  he  bestowed  upon  Beatrix,  and  which 
(237) 


238  BEATRIX 

Felicite  expected,  was  even  more  expressive  than 
she  anticipated. 

Beatrix  had  made  a  fascinating  toilet 

"How  coquettishly  you  are  dressed,  my  love!" 
said  Camille,  when  Calyste  had  taken  his  leave. 

This  sort  of  thing  went  on  for  six  days;  it  was 
accompanied,  unknown  to  Calyste,  by  a  series  of 
most  adroit  conversations  between  Camille  and  her 
friend.  There  was  a  duel  to  the  death  in  progress 
between  the  two  women, — a  duel  in  which  they 
attacked  each  other  with  ruses,  feints,  false  gen- 
erosity, deceitful  confessions,  cunning  confidences; 
in  which  one  concealed  and  the  other  laid  bare  her 
love,  and  yet  in  which  the  keen  steel,  made  red-hot 
by  Camille's  treacherous  words,  pierced  her  friend's 
heart  and  aroused  there  some  of  the  evil  impulses 
which  virtuous  women  have  such  difficulty  in  re- 
straining. Beatrix  at  last  took  offence  at  the 
distrust  exhibited  by  Camille;  she  deemed  it  dis- 
honorable to  both ;  she  was  enchanted  to  discover 
that  the  eminent  authoress  was  subject  to  the  petty 
weaknesses  of  her  sex,  and  she  determined  to  have 
the  pleasure  of  pointing  out  to  her  where  her  supe- 
riority ceased,  and  how  she  could  be  humiliated. 

"Well,  my  dear,  what  are  you  going  to  say  to 
him  to-day?"  she  asked  with  a  malicious  glance  at 
her  friend  when  the  pretended  lover  asked  permis- 
sion to  remain.  "Monday,  we  had  something  to 
talk  about  together;  Tuesday,  the  dinner  was  not 
satisfactory ;  Wednesday,  you  didn't  want  to  draw 
down  the  baroness's  wrath  on  your  head;  Thursday, 


BEATRIX  239 

you  were  going  to  walk  with  me;  yesterday,  you 
said  adieu,  as  soon  as  he  opened  his  mouth ;  to-day, 
I  propose  that  he  shall  stay,  poor  boy." 

"Already,  my  dear!"  said  Camille  with  stinging 
sarcasm. 

The  marchioness  blushed. 

"Remain,  Monsieur  du  Guenic,"  said  Mademoi- 
selle des  Touches  to  Calyste,  assuming  the  air  of  a 
queen  and  an  offended  woman. 

Beatrix  became  cold  and  stern ;  she  was  epigram- 
matic, crushing,  and  she  abused  poor  Calyste, 
whom  his  pretended  mistress  sent  away  home  at 
last  to  play  mouche  with  Mademoiselle  de  Ker- 
garouet 

"She  is  not  dangerous,  at  all  events!"  said  Beatrix 
with  a  smile. 

Young  people  in  love  are  like  the  starving;  the 
cook's  preparations  do  not  satisfy  them ;  they  think 
too  much  of  the  result  to  understand  the  means. 
As  he  returned  from  Les  Touches  to  Guerande, 
Calyste's  mind  was  full  of  Beatrix  and  he  had  no 
thought  for  the  profound  feminine  craft  displayed 
by  Felicite  in  forwarding  his  affair,  to  use  the  time- 
honored  phrase. 

During  that  week  the  marchioness  had  written 
but  one  letter  to  Conti,  and  that  symptom  of  indif- 
ference was  not  lost  upon  Camille.  Calyste's 
whole  existence  was  concentrated  in  the  brief  space 
during  which  he  was  permitted  to  see  the  marchion- 
ess. That  drop  of  water,  far  from  quenching  his 
thirst,  made  it  doubly  hard  to  endure.     The  magic 


240  BEATRIX 

words:  "She  shall  love  you!"  uttered  by  Camille 
and  approved  by  his  mother,  were  the  talisman  by 
whose  aid  he  restrained  the  frenzy  of  his  passion. 
He  devoured  the  moments,  he  could  not  sleep,  he 
cheated  insomnia  by  reading,  and  every  evening  he 
brought  home  cartloads  of  books,  according  to 
Mariotte.  His  aunt  cursed  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches ;  but  the  baroness,  who  had  gone  up  to  her 
son's  room  several  times  upon  perceiving  a  light 
there,  knew  the  secret  of  his  vigils.  Although  she 
had  never  passed  beyond  the  period  of  girlish 
timidity,  and  love  was  to  her  a  sealed  book,  Fanny, 
through  h^r  maternal  affection,  acquired  some  con- 
ception of  its  meaning;  but  the  major  part  of  the 
depths  of  that  sentiment  was  obscure  and  veiled  by 
clouds,  so  that  she  was  much  alarmed  by  her  son's 
plight,  and  by  the  single  longing  that  was  consum- 
ing him,  and  which  she  did  not  understand. 

Calyste  had  but  one  thought ;  he  seemed  to  have 
Beatrix  always  before  his  eyes.  In  the  evening, 
during  the  inevitable  game,  his  absent-mindedness 
resembled  his  father's  fitful  slumber.  Finding  him 
so  different  from  what  he  was  when  he  fancied 
himself  in  love  with  Camille,  the  baroness  recog- 
nized with  something  like  dismay,  the  symptoms 
that  denoted  genuine  love,  a  sentiment  altogether 
unknown  in  the  old  manor-house.  Feverish  irri- 
tability and  constant  self-absorption  made  Calyste 
dull  and  stupid.  He  would  sit  frequently  for  hours 
at  a  time  staring  at  a  figure  in  the  hangings. 

His  mother  had  advised  him  that  morning  to 


BEATRIX  241 

give  up  his  visits  to  Les  Touches,  and  to  drop  the 
two  women. 

"Not  go  to  Les  Touches  any  more!"  cried 
Calyste. 

"Go  there  if  you  will,  don't  be  angry  with  me, 
my  darling  boy,"  she  replied,  kissing  him  upon  the 
eyes  which  had  shot  fire  at  her. 

At  this  juncture,  Calyste  was  very  near  losing 
the  fruit  of  all  Camille's  skilful  manoeuvring,  be- 
cause of  the  Breton  fury  of  his  passion,  which  he 
could  no  longer  control.  He  swore  to  himself  that 
he  would  see  Beatrix  alone  and  speak  with  her,  de- 
spite his  promises  to  Camille.  He  longed  to  read 
what  her  eyes  might  say,  to  drown  his  own  glance 
therein,  to  scrutinize  the  most  trifling  details  of  her 
toilet,  to  breathe  the  perfume  she  exhaled,  to  listen 
to  the  music  of  her  voice,  to  follow  the  fascinating 
grace  of  her  movements,  to  embrace  her  whole  figure 
at  a  single  glance — in  a  word,  to  study  her,  as  a 
great  general  studies  the  field  on  which  a  decisive 
battle  is  to  be  fought;  he  longed  for  her  as  lovers 
long;  he  was  assailed  by  a  desire  which  closed  his 
ears,  clouded  his  intelligence  and  cast  him  into  a 
diseased  mental  condition  in  which  he  no  longer 
recognized  obstacles  or  distances;  in  which  he  no 
longer  even  felt  his  own  body.  He  thereupon  con- 
ceived the  project  of  going  to  Les  Touches  before 
the  hour  agreed  upon,  hoping  to  meet  Beatrix  in  the 
garden.  He  had  learned  that  she  was  accustomed 
to  walk  there  in  the  morning,  while  awaiting 
luncheon. 
16 


242  BEATRIX 

Mademoiselle  des  Touches  and  the  marchioness 
had  been  that  morning  to  inspect  the  salt  marshes 
and  the  basin,  bordered  by  fine  sand,  into  which  the 
sea  flows  and  which  resembles  a  lake  amid  the 
dunes;  they  had  returned  to  the  house  and  were 
talking  together  as  they  walked  back  and  forth  in 
the  narrow  sanded  paths  about  the  bowling-green. 

"If  this  country  interests  you,"  said  Camille, 
"you  must  go  with  Calyste  and  drive  around  Le 
Croisic.  There  are  some  fine  cliffs  there,  cascades 
of  granite,  little  bays  with  natural  bath-tubs,  and 
wonderfully  curious  formations ;  and  then  there  is 
the  sea  with  its  innumerable  fragments  of  marble — 
a  world  of  entertainment.  You  will  see  women 
making  wood, — that  is  to  say,  spreading  cow-dung 
along  the  walls  to  dry  it,  and  heaping  it  up  as  they 
do  the  peat  in  Paris;  and  in  winter  they  keep  them- 
selves warm  with  that  wood. ' ' 

"So  you  will  risk  Calyste,  will  you?"  said  the 
marchioness,  laughing,  and  in  a  tone  which  proved 
that  Ca.mille,  the  day  before,  by  feigning  ill-humor 
with  her,  had  forced  her  to  think  much  of  Calyste. 

"Ah!  my  dear,  when  you  comprehend  the  angelic 
heart  of  such  a  child  as  he  is,  you  will  understand 
me.  In  him,  mere  beauty  amounts  to  nothing;  you 
must  go  to  the  bottom  of  that  pure  heart,  of  that  art- 
less innocence,  amazed  at  every  step  it  takes  in  the 
domain  of  love.  Such  faith!  such  candor!  such 
charm!  The  ancients  were  right  in  worshiping 
divine  beauty.  Some  traveler  has  told  us  that  wild 
horses  select  the  most  beautiful  of  their  number 


BEATRIX  243 

for  their  leader.  Beauty,  my  dear,  is  tlie  genius 
of  things;  it  is  the  mari<  nature  places  upon  her 
most  perfect  creations,  it  is  the  truest  of  symbols, 
as  it  is  the  greatest  of  risks.  Has  anyone  ever 
imagined  a  deformed  angel?  do  they  not  always 
unite  grace  and  strength?  What  makes  us  stand 
for  hours  at  a  time  before  certain  pictures,  in  Italy, 
where  genius  has  struggled  for  years  and  years  to 
realize  on  canvas  one  of  these  ventures  of  nature? 
Come,  tell  me  with  your  hand  upon  your  con- 
science, do  we  not  join  ideal  beauty  with  moral 
grandeur  in  our  thoughts  ?  Well,  Calyste  is  one  of 
those  dreams  fulfilled,  he  has  the  courage  of  the  lion, 
who  lives  calmly  on  with  no  suspicion  of  his  king- 
ship. When  he  feels  at  ease  he  is  bright  and 
clever,  and  I  love  his  girlish  timidity.  My  mind 
finds  rest  in  his  heart  from  all  the  corruption,  all 
base  thoughts  of  science,  literature,  society,  politics, 
and  all  the  useless  accessories  with  which  we  stifle 
happiness.  I  am  now  what  I  never  was,  a  child !  I 
am  sure  of  him,  but  I  love  to  play  at  jealousy,  for  it 
pleases  him.     Besides,  that  is  part  of  my  secret" 

Beatrix  walked  on,  pensive  and  silent;  Camille 
was  suffering  indescribable  martyrdom  and  darted 
sidelong  glances  at  her  that  resembled  tongues  of 
flame. 

"Ah!  my  dear, ^OM  are  fortunate !"  said  Beatrix, 
resting  her  hand  upon  Camille's  arm  as  if  overdone 
by  some  secret  resistance. 

"Oh  I  yes,  very  fortunate !"  poor  Camille  retorted 
with  savage  bitterness. 


244  BEATRIX 

The  two  women  dropped  upon  a  bench,  exhausted 
by  their  emotions.  Never  had  any  human  being  of 
her  sex  been  subjected  to  more  genuine  seduction 
and  more  far-reaching  machiaveliianism  than  had 
Beatrix  during  the  week  just  past 

"But  I,  1  see  Conti's  infidelity  and  must  swallow 
it!" 

"Why  don't  you  leave  him,  pray?"  said  Camille, 
seizing  what  she  thought  was  a  favorable  moment 
to  strike  a  decisive  blow. 

"Can  I  do  it?" 

"Oh!  you  poor  child — " 

They  both  gazed  vacantly  at  a  clump  of  trees. 

"I  am  going  to  hurry  luncheon,"  said  Camille; 
"our  excursion  has  given  me  an  appetite." 

"Our  conversation  has  taken  away  mine,"  said 
Beatrix. 

In  her  morning  toilette,  Beatrix  stood  out  like  a 
ghost  against  the  green  masses  of  foliage.  Calyste, 
who  had  glided  through  the  salon  into  the  garden, 
walked  slowly  along  one  of  the  paths  in  order  to 
meet  the  marchioness  as  if  by  chance;  and  Beatrix 
was  unable  to  repress  a  slight  start  as  she  espied 
him. 

"In  what  did  1  displease  you  yesterday,  madame  ?" 
said  Calyste,  after  they  had  exchanged  some  com- 
monplace remarks. 

"Why,  you  neither  please  nor  displease  me, "she 
replied  in  a  mild  tone. 

Her  tone,  her  bearing,  her  exquisite  grace  gave 
him  courage. 


IN  THE  GARDEN  AT  LES  TOOCHES 


In  her  morning  toilette,  Beatrix  stood  out  like  a 
ghost  against  the  green  masses  of  foliage.  Calyste, 
who  had  glided  throiigh  the  salon  into  the  garden, 
walked  slowly  along  one  of  the  paths  in  order  to 
meet  the  marchioness  as  if  by  chance ;  and  Beatrix 
was  unable  to  repress  a  slight  start  as  she  espied 
him. 

"In  tvhat  did  I  displease  you  yesterday,  madame  ?  " 
said  Calyste. 


BEATRIX  245 

"I  am  entirely  indifferent  to  you,"  he  said  in 
a  trembling  voice,  and  the  tears  gathered  in  his 
eyes. 

"Should  we  not  be  indifferent  to  each  other  ?"  the 
marchioness  rejoined.  "We  both  have  a  genuine 
attachment — " 

"Eh!"  Calyste  exclaimed  hastily;  "I  did  love 
Camille,  but  I  no  longer  love  her." 

"In  that  case,  what  do  you  do  every  afternoon  and 
all  the  afternoon?"  said  she  with  a  cunning  smile. 
"I  do  not  imagine  that,  with  all  her  fondness  for 
tobacco,  Camille  prefers  a  cigar  to  you,  or  that  you, 
despite  your  admiration  for  female  authors,  would 
pass  four  hours  reading  their  novels." 

"You  know  then? — "  said  the  childlike  Breton 
ingenuously,  his  face  lighted  up  by  the  joy  of  gaz- 
ing at  his  idol. 

"Calyste!"  cried  Camille  vehemently,  suddenly 
appearing  on  the  scene,  cutting  him  short,  seizing 
his  arm  and  leading  him  a  few  steps  away ;  "Calyste, 
is  this  what  you  promised  me?" 

The  marchioness  overheard  the  reproach  uttered 
by  Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  who  disappeared  at 
once,  scolding  Calyste  as  she  led  him  away;  she 
was  thunderstruck  by  Camille's  declaration,  which 
she  could  not  understand.  Madame  de  Rochefide  was 
not  so  keen  as  Claude  Vignon,  The  possibility  of 
the  terrible  but  sublime  role  undertaken  by  Camille 
is  one  of  the  infamous  grandeurs  which  women 
admit  only  at  the  last  extremity.  Then  their  hearts 
break,    then  their   womanly   sentiments   cease  to 


246  BEATRIX 

exist,  then  begins  for  them  a  self-abnegation  which 
casts  them  into  hell  or  lifts  them  up  to  heaven. 

During  luncheon,  to  which  Calyste  was  invited, 
the  marchioness,  whose  real  sentiments  were  noble 
and  exalted,  retraced  her  steps,  stifling  the  germs 
of  love  that  were  expanding  in  her  heart.  Her 
treatment  of  Calyste  was  not  cold  and  harsh,  but  was 
stamped  with  an  amiable  indifference  that  drove 
him  to  despair.  Felicite  suggested  an  excursion  for 
the  next  day  but  one,  through  the  district  included 
between  Les  Touches,  Le  Croisic  and  the  village 
of  Batz.  She  asked  Calyste  to  devote  the  following 
day  to  procuring  a  boat  and  boatman,  in  case  they 
should  desire  to  travel  part  of  the  distance  by  sea. 
She  undertook  to  furnish  eatables,  horses  and  every- 
thing essential  to  make  their  jaunt  as  little  fatiguing 
as  possible.  Beatrix  upset  the  project  by  declaring 
flatly  that  she  would  not  expose  herself  to  the  risks 
of  traveling  about  the  country  in  that  way. 

Calyste's  face,  which  had  expressed  the  keenest 
delight,  was  at  once  covered  with  a  veil. 

"Pray,  what  are  you  afraid  of,  my  dear.?"  said 
Cam  i  lie. 

"My  position  is  too  delicate  for  me  to  endanger, 
not  my  reputation,  but  my  happiness, "  she  said  with 
emphasis,  looking  at  the  young  Breton.  "You 
know  how  jealous  Conti  is;  if  he  should  learn — " 

"And  who  would  tell  him?" 

"Isn't  he  coming  back  for  me?"  Those  words 
drove  the  color  from  Calyste's  cheeks.  Despite  Feli- 
cite's  entreaties,  re-enforced  by  Calyste's,  Madame 


BEATRIX  247 

de  Rochefide  was  obdurate  and  exhibited  what 
Camille  called  her  obstinacy.  Notwithstanding  the 
hopes  Felicite  held  out  to  him,  Calyste  left  Les 
Touches  a  prey  to  one  of  those  lovers'  griefs,  whose 
violence  amounts  to  downright  madness. 

Having  returned  to  the  Du  Guenic  mansion,  he 
did  not  leave  his  room  until  dinner-time,  and  re- 
turned to  it  again  very  soon  after  that  repast  was 
concluded.  At  ten  o'clock  his  mother,  much  con- 
cerned, went  up  to  see  him  and  found  him  writing 
madly,  surrounded  by  a  vast  heap  of  defaced  and 
torn  paper;  he  was  writing  to  Beatrix,  for  he  was 
suspicious  of  Camille;  the  marchioness's  demeanor 
during  their  brief  interview  in  the  garden  had  en- 
couraged him  immensely. 

Never,  as  may  well  be  imagined,  is  a  first  love- 
letter  a  flood  of  burning  lava  from  the  heart  In 
the  case  of  all  young  men  whom  corruption  has  not 
assailed,  such  a  letter  is  accompanied  by  efferves- 
cence too  abundant  and  too  often  repeated  not  to  be 
the  essence  of  several  attempts,  begun,  cast  aside, 
rewritten.  This  is  the  effusion  upon  which  Ca- 
lyste finally  decided,  and  which  he  read  to  his  poor 
astonished  mother.  To  her  mind,  it  was  as  if  the 
old  house  were  on  fire,  for  her  son's  passion  glowed 
like  the  reflection  of  a  conflagration. 

Calyste  to  Beatrix 

"Madame,  I  loved  you  when  you  were  only  a 
dream  to  me — judge  of  the  strength  my  passion  has 


248  BEATRIX 

acquired  since  I  have  seen  you.  The  dream  has 
been  surpassed  by  the  reality.  It  is  my  misfortune 
that  I  say  nothing  to  you  that  you  do  not  already 
know,  when  I  tell  you  how  lovely  you  are;  but  it 
may  well  be  that  your  beauty  has  never  aroused  in 
any  other  person  such  a  multitude  of  emotions  as  in 
me.  You  are  beautiful  in  more  ways  than  one ;  and 
I  have  studied  you  so  closely,  thinking  of  you  day 
and  night,  that  I  have  fathomed  the  mysteries  of 
your  person,  the  secrets  of  your  heart  and  your 
misprized  delicacy  of  sentiment  Have  you  ever 
been  understood,  adored,  as  you  deserve  to  be.^ 
Pray  believe  that  there  is  not  one  of  your  qualities 
that  does  not  find  an  interpreter  in  my  heart:  your 
pride  finds  an  echo  in  mine,  the  nobility  of  your 
glance,  the  grace  of  your  carriage,  the  distinction 
of  your  every  movement,  everything  about  you  is 
in  harmony  with  the  thoughts  and  aspirations  hid- 
den at  the  bottom  of  your  heart,  and  it  is  by  divin- 
ing them  that  I  have  dared  to  deem  myself  worthy 
of  you.  If  I  had  not  become  within  a  few  days 
another  yourself,  should  I  speak  to  you  of  myself  ? 
To  read  my  own  heart  would  be  pure  egotism ;  in 
this  matter  you  are  much  more  concerned  than 
Calyste.  In  order  to  write  to  you,  Beatrix,  I  have 
imposed  silence  upon  my  twenty  years,  I  have  for- 
gotten myself,  I  have  matured  my  thoughts — or  per- 
haps you  have  matured  them  by  causing  me, 
innocently,  however,  to  pass  a  week  of  most  horri- 
ble suffering.  Do  not  deem  me  one  of  those  com- 
monplace lovers  of  whom  you  so  justly  make  sport 


BEATRIX  249 

There  is  small  credit  in  loving  a  young,  beautiful, 
clever,  noble  woman!  Alas!  1  do  not  even  dream 
of  deserving  you.  What  am  I  to  you?  a  child  at- 
tracted by  the  splendor  of  beauty,  by  grandeur  of 
mind,  as  an  insect  is  attracted  by  the  light  You 
cannot  do  otherwise  than  tread  upon  the  flowers  of 
my  heart,  but  it  will  be  my  joy  to  see  you  trample 
them  under  your  feet  Absolute  devotion,  bound- 
less faith,  insensate  love,  all  these  treasures  of  a 
true  and  loving  heart  are  nothing;  they  assist  one 
to  love,  but  do  not  win  love  in  return.  At  times,  I 
cannot  understand  how  such  burning  fanaticism  can 
fail  to  inflame  its  idol ;  but  when  I  meet  your  stern, 
cold  eye,  I  feel  an  icy  chill.  It  is  your  disdain  that 
does  effective  work  and  not  my  adoration.  Why.? 
You  cannot  hate  me  as  I  love  you,  and  should  the 
weaker  sentiment  triumph  over  the  stronger?  I 
loved  Felicite  with  all  the  strength  of  my  heart;  I 
forgot  her  in  a  day,  in  a  moment,  when  I  saw  you. 
She  was  the  illusion,  you  are  the  reality.  You  have 
unwittingly  destroyed  my  happiness,  and  you  owe 
me  nothing  in  exchange.  I  loved  Camille  without 
hope,  and  you  give  me  no  hope ;  nothing  is  changed 
save  the  divinity.  I  was  an  idolater,  now  I  am  a 
Christian, — that's  the  whole  story.  But  you  have 
taught  me  that  to  love  is  the  first  of  all  forms  of 
happiness,  and  that  to  be  loved  follows  after.  Ac- 
cording to  Camille,  to  love  only  for  a  few  days  is 
not  to  love  at  all :  the  love  that  does  not  increase 
from  day  to  day  is  a  paltry  passion ;  in  order  to  in- 
crease, its  end  must  not  be  visible,  and  she  saw  the 


250  BEATRIX 

impending  setting  of  our  sun.  At  sight  of  you,  1 
understood  the  sayings  that  I  had  been  combating 
with  all  the  strength  of  my  youth,  with  all  the  en- 
ergy of  my  desires,  with  the  despotic  authority  of 
my  twenty  years.  Thereupon  Camille,  the  great 
and  sublime  Camille,  mingled  her  tears  with  mine. 
I  am  free,  therefore,  to  love  you  on  earth  and  in 
Heaven,  as  one  loves  God.  If  you  loved  me,  you 
would  not  have  at  hand  the  arguments  by  which 
Camille  crushed  my  efforts.  We  are  both  young, 
we  can  fly  on  the  same  wings,  under  the  same  sky, 
without  fearing  the  tempest  dreaded  by  that  eagle. 
— But  what  am  I  saying?  I  have  been  carried  far 
beyond  my  modest  aspirations.  You  will  cease  to 
believe  in  the  resignation,  the  patience,  the  dumb 
admiration  which  I  implore  you  not  to  wound  to  no 
purpose.  I  know,  Beatrix,  that  you  cannot  love 
me  without  forfeiting  your  self-esteem.  Therefore, 
I  ask  for  nothing  in  return.  Camille  said  recently, 
,  apropos  of  her  own  name,  that  there  is  an  innate 
fatality  in  names.  That  fatality  I  foresaw  for  my- 
self in  your  name,  when,  as  I  stood  upon  the  jetty 
at  Guerande,  it  caught  my  eye  on  the  brink  of  the 
Ocean.  You  will  pass  through  my  life  as  Beatrice 
passed  through  Dante's.  My  heart  will  serve  as 
a  pedestal  to  a  pale,  revengeful,  jealous  and  unre- 
lenting statue.  You  are  forbidden  to  love  me;  you 
would  suffer  a  thousand  deaths,  you  would  be  be- 
trayed, humiliated,  miserable;  there  is  in  your 
heart  the  pride  of  a  demon  that  binds  you  to  the 
pillar  you  have  embraced;  you  will  perish  there. 


BEATRIX  251 

shaking  the  temple  to  its  fail,  as  Samson  did.  1 
have  not  guessed  all  these  things,  for  my  love  is  too 
blind;  but  Camille  told  them  to  me.  It  is  not  my 
mind  that  is  speaking  to  you  now,  but  hers;  I  have 
no  mind,  as  soon  as  I  think  of  you,  for  the  blood 
rushes  from  my  heart  in  hot  waves  that  darken  my 
faculties,  take  away  my  strength,  paralyze  my 
tongue  and  force  my  knees  to  bend  and  give  way 
beneath  me.  I  can  but  adore  you,  whatever  you 
may  do.  Camille  calls  your  firmness  obstinacy; 
but  I  defend  you,  for  I  believe  it  is  dictated  by  vir- 
tue. You  are  only  the  lovelier  for  it  in  my  eyes. 
I  know  my  destiny :  the  pride  of  Bretagne  rises  to 
the  level  of  the  woman  who  has  made  a  virtue  of 
her  pride.  And  so,  dear  Beatrix,  be  kind  and  com- 
forting to  me.  When  the  victims  were  marked  out 
for  the  sacrifice,  they  were  crowned  with  flowers; 
you  owe  me  the  bouquet  of  pity,  the  music  of  sac- 
rifice. Am  I  not  the  living  witness  of  your  grand- 
eur, and  will  you  not  rise  to  the  height  of  my  love, 
which  you  reject  with  scorn,  despite  its  sincerity, 
despite  its  everlasting  intensity  ?  Ask  Camille  how 
I  behaved  from  the  day  she  told  me  that  she  loved 
Claude  Vignon.  I  said  not  a  word,  I  suffered  in 
silence.  For  you  I  will  be  even  stronger  if  you  do 
not  drive  me  to  despair,  if  you  appreciate  my 
heroism.  A  single  word  of  praise  from  you  would 
enable  me  to  endure  the  agony  of  martyrdom.  If  you 
persist  in  this  frigid  silence,  this  deathly  disdain, 
you  will  make  me  believe  that  I  am  to  be  feared. 
Ah!  be  to  me  what  you  really  are,  charming,  gay, 


252  BEATRIX 

bright,  loving.  Talk  with  me  of  Gennaro,  as  Ca- 
mille  talked  with  me  of  Claude.  I  have  no  genius 
save  that  of  love,  I  have  nothing  that  makes  me 
formidable,  and  I  will  act  in  your  presence  as  if 
I  did  not  love  you.  Will  you  reject  the  prayer  of 
a  love  so  humble,  of  a  poor  child  who  asks  no 
other  favor  than  a  ray  of  your  light  to  lighten  his 
path,  a  beam  from  your  sun  to  warm  him !  The 
man  you  love  will  see  you  always;  poor  Calyste 
has  but  a  few  days  before  him ;  you  will  soon  be 
rid  of  him.  So  I  may  come  to  Les  Touches  again 
to-morrow,  may  I  not.?  you  will  not  refuse  my  es- 
cort to  visit  the  neighborhood  of  Le  Croisic  and  the 
village  of  Batz.?  If  you  do  not  come,  that  will  be  a 
response  and  Calyste  will  understand  it" 

There  were  four  more  pages  of  fine,  close  writing, 
in  which  Calyste  explained  the  terrible  threat  im- 
plied in  the  last  words  by  describing  his  youth  and 
his  life;  but  he  proceeded  by  exclamatory  phrases; 
there  were  many  of  those  exclamation  points  which 
are  scattered  broadcast  by  modern  authors  in  dan- 
gerous passages,  like  planks  held  out  to  the  reader's 
imagination  to  enable  it  to  cross  yawning  chasms. 
To  reproduce  that  artless  narrative  would  be  to 
repeat  what  has  already  been  said;  if  it  did  not 
touch  Madame  de  Rochefide,  it  would  have  but  little 
interest  for  connoisseurs  in  violent  emotions;  but  it 
made  the  mother  weep. 

"Then  you  have  not  been  fortunate?"  she  said  to 
her  son. 


BEATRIX  253 

This  terrible  poem  of  emotion,  which  was  raging 
like  a  tempest  in  Calyste's  heart,  and  was  about  to 
carry  its  ravages  into  another  heart,  terrified  the 
baroness:  it  was  the  first  time  in  her  life  she  had 
ever  read  a  love-letter. 

Calyste  was  standing  in  terrible  embarrassment; 
he  had  no  idea  how  to  forward  his  letter.  The  Che- 
valier du  Halga  was  still  in  the  great  hall  where  the 
last  hands  of  a  lively  game  of  mouche  were  in  prog- 
ress. Charlotte  de  Kergarouet,  in  despair  at 
Calyste's  indifference,  was  trying  to  make  herself 
agreeable  to  his  relatives  in  order  to  assure  her 
marriage  through  their  influence.  Calyste  followed 
his  mother  and  appeared  in  the  hall,  with  his  letter 
in  his  pocket,  burning  his  heart;  he  fluttered  about 
and  back  and  forth  like  a  butterfly  that  has  strayed 
into  a  house.  At  last,  the  mother  and  son  drew  the 
Chevalier  du  Halga  into  the  dining-room,  sending 
away  Mariotte  and  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel*s 
small  servant 

"What  do  they  want  of  the  chevalier.?"  said  old 
Zephirine  to  old  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel. 

"Calyste  acts  to  me  as  if  he  were  mad,"  was  the 
reply.  "He  has  no  more  consideration  for  Charlotte 
than  if  she  were  a  paludilre.'* 

It  had  occurred  to  the  baroness  that  the  Che- 
valier du  Halga  had  in  all  probability  sailed  in  the 
waters  of  gallantry  somewhere  about  the  year 
1780,  and  she  had  told  Calyste  to  consult  him. 

"Which  is  the  best  way  to  send  a  letter  secretly  to 
one's  mistress  ?"  said  Calyste  in  the  chevalier's  ear. 


254  BEATRIX 

"Put  it  in  her  maid's  hand,  accompanied  by  a  few 
louis;  for  a  maid  is  sure  to  be  in  the  secret  sooner 
or  later  and  it's  better  to  let  her  in  at  the  outset," 
said  the  chevalier,  and  a  smile  played  about  his 
lips;  "but  it's  much  better  to  deliver  it  in  person." 

"A  few  louis!"  cried  the  baroness. 

Calyste  returned  and  took  his  hat;  then  he  hur- 
ried away  to  Les  Touches,  and  appeared  like  a 
ghost  in  the  little  salon,  where  he  heard  the  voices 
of  Camilla  and  Beatrix.  They  were  both  sitting 
on  the  divan  and  seemed  to  understand  each  other 
perfectly. 

Calyste,  with  the  sudden  accession  of  brilliancy 
that  love  sometimes  imparts,  threw  himself  reck- 
lessly upon  the  divan  beside  the  marchioness,  took 
her  hand  and  slipped  his  letter  into  it,  unseen  by 
Felicite,  close  as  her  scrutiny  was.  Calyste's  heart 
was  tingling  with  keen  but  pleasurable  emotion  as 
he  felt  that  his  hand  was  pressed  by  Beatrix,  who, 
without  pausing  in  what  she  was  saying,  or  exhib- 
iting any  sign  of  embarrassment,  slipped  the  letter 
inside  her  glove. 

"You  throw  yourself  at  women  as  you  throw  your- 
self upon  divans,"  she  said  with  a  laugh. 

"That  isn't  according  to  the  theory  of  the  Turks, 
by  the  way,"  retorted  Felicite,  unable  to  resist  the 
temptation  to  make  the  epigram. 

Calyste  rose,  took  Felicite's  hand  and  kissed  it; 
then  he  went  to  the  piano  and  ran  his  fingers  over  all 
the  keys  from  one  end  to  the  other.  This  joyous  out- 
burst perplexed  Camille,  who  beckoned  him  to  her. 


BEATRIX  255 

"What's  the  matter  with  you?"  she  whispered  in 
his  ear. 

"Nothing,"  he  replied. 

"There  is  something  between  them,"  said  Ca- 
mille  to  herself. 

The  marchioness  was  impenetrable.  Camille 
tried  to  make  Calyste  talk,  hoping  that  he  would  be- 
tray himself;  but  the  youth  alleged  his  mother's 
anxiety  as  an  excuse  and  left  Les  Touches  at 
eleven  o'clock,  not  until  he  had  undergone  the  fire 
of  a  searching  glance  from  Camille,  who  had  never 
heard  that  pretext  from  his  lips  before. 

After  the  agitation  of  a  night  full  of  dreams  of 
Beatrix,  after  he  had  gone  into  the  town  twenty 
times  during  the  morning  to  meet  the  reply  that 
did  not  come,  the  marchioness's  maid  appeared  at 
the  Du  Guenic  mansion  and  handed  Calyste  the 
following  letter,  which  he  read  beneath  the  arbor  in 
the  garden : 

Beatrix  to  Calyste 

"You  are  a  noble-hearted  child,  but  a  child  you 
are.  You  owe  yourself  to  Camille,  who  adores  you. 
You  will  not  find  in  me  the  eminent  qualities  that 
distinguish  her  nor  the  happiness  she  lavishes  upon 
you.  Whatever  you  may  think,  she  is  young  and 
I  am  old,  her  heart  is  full  of  treasures  and  mine  is 
empty,  she  is  devoted  to  you  to  a  degree  that  you 
do  not  appreciate  as  you  ought,  she  is  absolutely 
unselfish,  she  lives  only  in  you ;  while  I  should  be 
constantly  oppressed  with  doubts,  I  should  involve 


256  BEATRIX 

you  in  a  life  of  utter  weariness,  an  ignoble  life 
ruined  by  my  own  fault  Camille  is  free,  she  can 
go  and  come  at  will ;  1  am  a  slave.  Indeed,  you  for- 
get that  I  love  and  that  I  am  loved  in  return.  My 
present  position  ought  to  protect  me  from  homage  of 
every  sort  For  a  man  to  love  me,  or  to  tell  me 
that  he  loves  me,  is  an  insult  Would  not  another 
misstep  place  me  on  the  level  of  the  vilest  creatures 
of  my  sex?  How  can  you,  young  and  refined  as 
you  are,  force  me  to  tell  you  these  things  which  do 
not  issue  from  my  heart  without  rending  it?  I  pre- 
ferred the  scandal  of  an  irreparable  catastrophe  to 
the  shame  of  constant  deception,  my  own  ruin  to 
the  ruin  of  my  probity ;  but,  in  the  eyes  of  many 
persons  whose  esteem  1  value,  I  am  still  estimable; 
by  changing  again,  I  should  fall  several  degrees 
lower.  Society  is  still  indulgent  to  those  whose 
constancy  covers  with  a  cloak  the  illegitimacy  of 
their  happiness;  but  it  is  pitiless  to  continued 
vicious  habits.  I  am  neither  disdainful  nor  angry ; 
I  answer  you  frankly  and  simply.  You  are  young, 
you  know  nothing  of  the  world,  you  are  actuated  by 
a  mere  fancy,  and  you  are  incapable,  like  all  those 
whose  lives  are  pure,  of  making  the  reflections  that 
unhappiness  inspires.  I  will  go  farther.  Were  I 
the  most  humiliated  woman  on  earth,  had  I  to  con- 
ceal shocking  misery,  were  I  betrayed,  were  I  de- 
serted too, — thank  God!  nothing  of  all  that  can  be, 
— but  if  by  the  vengeance  of  Heaven  it  should  be, 
no  one  on  earth  would  ever  see  me  again.  Yes,  1 
should  have  the  courage  to  kill  a  man  who  dared 


BEATRIX  257 

speak  to  me  of  love  under  those  circumstances,  as- 
suming that  any  man  could  find  his  way  to  me  in 
my  pitiable  plight  There  you  have  the  burden 
of  my  thoughts.  So,  perhaps  I  ought  to  thank  you 
for  having  written  to  me.  After  your  letter,  and 
especially  after  this  reply,  I  can  feel  at  my  ease 
with  you  at  Les  Touches,  I  can  act  according  to  my 
nature  and  as  you  ask  me  to  do.  I  say  nothing  of 
the  bitter  ridicule  that  would  pursue  me  in  case  my 
eyes  should  cease  to  express  the  sentiments  of 
which  you  complain.  A  second  theft  from  Camille 
would  be  a  proof  of  weakness  to  which  a  woman 
does  not  twice  make  up  her  mind.  Even  if  I  loved 
you  madly,  if  I  were  blind,  if  I  should  forget  every- 
thing else,  I  should  always  have  Camille  before  my 
eyes.  Her  love  for  you  is  one  of  those  barriers  that 
are  too  high  to  be  surmounted  by  any  power,  even 
by  an  angel's  wings;  there  is  but  one  devil  that 
does  not  recoil  from  such  infamous  treachery  as  that 
1  could  give  you,  my  child,  a  multitude  of  reasons 
which  noble-minded  women  of  refined  instincts  keep 
to  themselves  and  which  men  do  not  understand 
even  when  they  are  as  like  ourselves  as  you  are  at 
this  moment  Lastly,  you  have  a  mother  who  has 
shown  you  the  part  a  woman  should  play  in  life; 
she  is  pure  and  stainless,  and  has  nobly  fulfilled  her 
destiny ;  what  I  know  of  her  has  brought  tears  to  my 
eyes  and  I  have  felt  envy  stirring  in  my  heart  I 
might  have  been  like  her!  Calyste,  your  wife 
should  be  like  her,  her  life  like  hers.  I  will  not 
again  mischievously  commend  you  to  that  little 
17 


258  BEATRIX 

Charlotte,  who  would  very  soon  weary  you,  but  to 
some  divinely  beautiful  maiden  who  is  worthy  of 
you.  If  I  belonged  to  you,  I  should  make  your  life  a 
failure.  Either  you  would  lack  faith  and  constancy 
or  you  would  honestly  entertain  the  purpose  of  de- 
voting your  whole  existence  to  me :  I  tell  you  frankly 
that  I  should  take  it  and  drag  you  with  me,  where, 
I  know  not,  far  from  the  world ;  I  should  make  you 
very  miserable,  for  I  am  jealous,  I  see  monsters  in 
a  drop  of  water,  I  am  driven  to  despair  by  petty 
annoyances  which  other  women  pass  by ;  there  are 
certain  inexorable  thoughts  too,  which  would  come 
from  myself,  not  from  you,  and  would  wound  me  to 
the  death.  When  a  man  at  the  end  of  the  tenth 
year  of  his  good  fortune  is  not  so  respectful  and  con- 
siderate as  on  the  eve  of  the  day  he  first  implored  a 
favor,  he  seems  to  me  an  infamous  wretch  and  de- 
grades me  in  my  own  eyes !  such  a  lover  no  longer 
believes  in  the  Amadis  de  Gauls  and  Cyruses  of  my 
dreams.  To-day,  pure  love  is  a  fable  and  I  see  in 
you  naught  but  a  fatuous  desire,  the  end  of  which 
you  do  not  see.  I  am  not  yet  forty  years  old,  I  do 
not  know  how  to  force  my  pride  to  bend  before  the 
authority  of  experience,  I  have  not  the  love  that 
makes  one  humble,  in  short,  I  am  a  woman  whose 
character  is  still  too  immature  not  to  be  despicable. 
I  cannot  answer  for  my  own  moods,  and  my  charm 
is  all  on  the  outside.  Perhaps  I  have  not  as  yet 
suffered  enough  to  have  the  indulgent  manners  and 
unquestioning  affection  which  we  owe  to  cruel 
disillusionment.    Happiness  has  an  impertinence  of 


BEATRIX  259 

its  own  and  I  am  very  impertinent  Camille  will 
always  be  your  devoted  slave,  and  I  should  be  an 
unreasonable  tyrant  Moreover,  was  not  Camille 
placed  beside  you  by  your  good  angel  to  enable  you 
to  reach  unscathed,  the  moment  when  you  will  begin 
the  life  you  are  destined  to  lead,  and  in  which  you 
must  not  be  found  wanting?  I  know  Felicite  well ! 
her  affection  is  inexhaustible;  she  disregards  the 
graces  of  our  sex,  perhaps,  but  she  displays  the 
creative  force,  the  genius  of  constancy  and  the  noble 
intrepidity  which  make  everything  else  endurable. 
She  will  find  a  wife  for  you  although  it  will  cost  her 
a  most  horrible  pang ;  she  will  find  a  Beatrix  for  you 
who  is  free,  if  Beatrix  fulfils  your  ideal  woman  and 
your  dreams;  she  will  smooth  away  all  the  difficul- 
ties that  beset  your  future.  The  sale  of  an  acre  of 
land  she  owns  in  Paris  will  release  your  Bretagne 
estates  and  she  will  make  you  her  heir ;  has  she  not 
already  made  you  her  son  by  adoption?  Alas! 
what  can  I  do  to  make  you  happy  ?  Nothing.  Do 
not  therefore  betray  an  infinite  love  which  stops 
only  at  the  obligations  of  maternity.  I  consider 
this  Camille  of  yours  very  fortunate,  do  you  know! 
— The  admiration  poor  Beatrix  inspires  in  you  is 
one  of  the  peccadilloes  to  which  women  of  Camille's 
age  are  indulgent  to  the  last  degree.  When  they 
are  sure  of  being  beloved,  they  forgive  their  faith- 
ful lover  an  occasional  infidelity;  indeed,  it  is  one  of 
the  keenest  pleasures  they  know  to  triumph  over 
more  youthful  rivals.  Camille  is  far  above  other 
women ;  this  is  not  meant  for  her  ear,  and  I  say  it 


26o  BEATRIX 

only  to  set  your  conscience  at  rest  1  have  studied 
Camille  carefully;  she  is,  in  my  opinion,  one  of  the 
grandest  figures  of  our  time.  She  is  clever  and 
kindly,  two  qualities  which  are  almost  irreconcil- 
able in  women;  she  is  generous  and  simple-minded, 
two  other  forms  of  grandeur  which  are  rarely  found 
in  the  same  person.  I  have  discovered  unfailing 
treasures  in  the  depths  of  her  heart;  it  seems  as  if 
Dante  must  have  had  her  in  mind  when  he  wrote 
the  beautiful  strophe  in  his  Paradiso  concerning 
everlasting  happiness,  which  she  explained  to  you 
the  other  night — the  passsage  that  ends  with  Sen^a 
hrama  sicura  riche^^a.  She  has  talked  to  me  about 
her  destiny,  she  has  told  me  the  story  of  her  life, 
proving  to  me  that  love,  the  object  of  our  longings 
and  our  dreams,  has  always  avoided  her,  and  I  re- 
plied that  she  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  living  demon- 
stration of  the  difficulty  of  duplicating  sublime 
things  which  lies  at  the  root  of  much  misery. 
Yours  is  one  of  those  angelic  hearts,  whose  sister 
it  seems  hopeless  to  think  of  meeting.  From  that 
calamity,  my  dear  child,  Camille  will  save  you; 
she  will  find  for  you,  though  it  kill  her,  a  creature 
with  whom  you  can  live  happily. 

"I  extend  to  you  a  friendly  hand  and  rely,  not 
upon  your  heart,  but  upon  your  good  sense  to  make 
it  possible  for  us  to  be  like  brother  and  sister  to 
each  other,  and  to  let  our  correspondence  end  here ; 
for  to  write  from  Guerande  to  Les  Touches  is,  to  say 
the  least,  peculiar. 

"BEATRIX  DE  CASTERAN." 


BEATRIX  261 

Moved  to  the  last  degree  by  the  details  and  the 
progress  of  her  son's  affair  with  the  lovely  Marquise 
de  Rochefide,  the  baroness  could  not  remain  in  the 
hall  where  she  was  sitting  at  her  work,  with  one  eye 
constantly  upon  Calyste ;  she  left  her  chair  and  went 
to  him  in  the  arbor  with  an  air  that  was  at  once 
humble  and  bold.  At  that  moment,  the  mother  had 
the  fascinating  grace  of  a  courtesan  seeking  to  ob- 
tain a  concession. 

"Well  ?"  she  said,  in  a  trembling  voice,  but  with- 
out actually  asking  to  see  the  letter. 

Calyste  showed  her  the  letter  and  read  it  to  her. 
Those  two  pure  hearts  were  so  simple  and  unsus- 
pecting that  they  detected  in  that  astute  and  per- 
fidious effusion,  none  of  the  wiles  and  none  of  the 
snares  with  which  the  marchioness  had  inter- 
larded it. 

"She  is  a  great  and  noble  woman!"  said  the  bar- 
oness, whose  eyes  were  moist  "I  will  pray  for 
her.  I  did  not  believe  that  a  mother  could  desert 
her  husband,  her  child,  and  retain  so  much  virtue! 
She  is  worthy  of  forgiveness." 

"Am  1  not  justified  in  adoring  her  ?'*  said  Calyste. 

"But  where  will  this  love  lead  you.^"  cried  the 
baroness.  "Ah!  my  child,  how  many  women  en- 
dowed with  noble  sentiments  are  dangerous  I  The 
evil-minded  ones  are  less  to  be  feared.  Marry 
Charlotte  de  Kergarouet,  redeem  two-thirds  of  your 
family  estates.  By  selling  a  farm  or  two  Mademoi- 
selle de  Pen-Hoel  will  effect  that  great  result,  and 
the  good  creature  will  make  it  her  care  to  invest 


262  BEATRIX 

your  property  to  good  advantage.  You  can  leave 
your  children  an  honorable  name  and  a  handsome 
fortune — " 

"Forget  Beatrix?"  said  Calyste  in  a  hollow 
voice,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  ground. 

He  left  the  baroness' and  went  up  to  his  own  room 
to  reply  to  Beatrix. 

Madame  du  Guenic  had  the  letter  engraved  on 
her  heart;  she  was  determined  to  know  what  to  ex- 
pect as  to  Calyste's  prospects.  About  that  hour  of 
the  day,  the  Chevalier  du  Halga  always  took  his  dog 
out  for  a  walk  on  the  mall;  the  baroness,  sure  of 
finding  him  there,  put  on  her  hat  and  shawl  and 
went  out.  To  see  the  Baronne  du  Guenic  else- 
where than  at  church,  or  in  one  of  the  two  pretty 
little  paths  set  aside  for  promenaders  on  holidays, 
when  she  was  accompanied  by  her  husband  and  Ma- 
demoiselle de  Pen-Hoel,  was  such  a  noteworthy 
event,  that  within  two  hours  every  person  in  the 
town  accosted  his  neighbor  with : 

"Madame  du  Guenic  went  out  to-day;  did  you 
see  her.?" 

So  it  was  that  the  news  soon  reached  the  ears  of 
Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel,  who  said  to  her  niece : 

"Something  most  extraordinary  is  going  on  at  the 
Du  Guenics'." 

"Calyste  is  madly  in  love  with  the  beautiful  Mar- 
quise de  Rochefide,"  said  Charlotte;  "I  must  leave 
Guerande  and  return  to  Nantes." 

The  Chevalier  du  Halga,  surprised  to  find  the 
baroness  in  quest  of  him,  let  go  Thisbe's  leash, 


BEATRIX  263 

realizing  the  impossibility  of  dividing  his  atten- 
tions. 

"Chevalier,  you  have  been  a  lady's  man,  have 
you  not?"  said  the  baroness. 

Captain  du  Halga  drew  himself  up  with  a  de- 
cidedly dandified  air.  Madame  du  Guenic,  without 
saying  a  word  of  her  son  or  of  the  marchioness,  gave 
him  the  substance  of  the  letter,  and  inquired  his 
opinion  as  to  its  probable  meaning.  The  chevalier 
elevated  his  nose  and  caressed  his  chin ;  he  listened, 
making  little  grimaces  from  time  to  time;  at  last  he 
looked  the  baroness  in  the  face  with  a  knowing  ex- 
pression. 

"When  a  thoroughbred  horse  has  a  fence  to  leap 
he  reconnoitres  it  and  smells  at  it,"  he  said; 
"Calyste  is  the  luckiest  dog  in  the  world." 

"Hush!"  said  the  baroness. 

"I  am  dumb.  In  the  old  days  I  had  no  advantage 
but  that,"  said  the  old  chevalier.  "It's  a  fine  day," 
he  continued  after  a  pause,  "the  wind  is  north-east. 
Tudieu!  how  the  Belle-Poule  hugged  the  wind  the 
day  the — But,"  he  said,  interrupting  himself,  "my 
ears  are  ringing,  and  I  feel  pains  in  my  ribs;  the 
weather  will  soon  change.  The  Belle-Poule' s  fight 
made  such  a  noise,  you  know,  that  the  ladies  wore 
caps  d,  la  Belle-Poule.  Madame  de  Kergarouet  was 
the  first  to  go  to  the  Opera  in  one.  'Madame,  your 
head  is  arrayed  for  conquest,'  I  said  to  her,and  the 
remark  went  the  round  of  the  boxes." 

The  baroness  listened  good-naturedly  to  the  old 
man,  who,  faithful  to  the  laws  of  gallantry,  escorted 


264  BEATRIX 

her  as  far  as  the  Du  Guenic  lane,  neglecting  Thisbe 
altogether.  On  the  way  the  chevalier  divulged  the 
secret  of  Thisbe's  birth.  Thisbe  was  the  grand- 
daughter of  the  priceless  Thisbe,  belonging  to  Ma- 
dame I'Amirale  de  Kergarouet,  the  Comte  de 
Kergarouet's  first  wife.  This  last  Thisbe  was 
eighteen  years  old. 

The  baroness  went  rapidly  upstairs  to  Calyste's 
room,  as  light  of  heart  as  if  she  were  in  love  on  her 
own  account  Calyste  was  not  in  the  room,  but 
Fanny  spied  a  letter  addressed  to  Madame  de 
Rochefide  lying  on  the  table,  folded  but  not  sealed. 
Ungovernable  curiosity  impelled  the  anxious  mother 
to  read  her  son's  reply.  Her  indiscretion  was 
cruelly  punished.  She  felt  a  horrible  pain  at  her 
heart  as  she  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  precipice  over 
whose  edge  Calyste  was  being  pushed  by  his  love. 


Calyste  to  Beatrix 

"Ah!  what  care  I  for  the  blood  of  the  Du  Guenics 
in  these  days,  dear  Beatrix!  My  name  is  Beatrix; 
Beatrix's  happiness  is  my  happiness,  her  life  my 
life,  and  my  whole  fortune  is  in  her  heart  Our 
estates  have  been  in  pawn  for  two  centuries,  they 
can  remain  in  pawn  for  two  more  centuries ;  our 
farmers  will  keep  them  and  no  one  can  carry  them 
off.  To  see  you  and  love  you — that  is  my  religion ! 
I,  marry!  the  idea  of  it  has  thrown  my  heart  into 
a  turmoil.     Are  there  two  Beatrix's  ?    I  will  never 


BEATRIX  265 

marry  anyone  but  you,  I  will  wait  twenty  years  if 
I  must;  I  am  young  and  you  will  always  be  beauti- 
ful. My  mother  is  a  saint,  I  cannot  pass  judgment 
upon  her.  She  never  was  in  love!  I  know  now 
how  much  she  has  lost  and  what  sacrifices  she  has 
made.  You  have  taught  me,  Beatrix,  to  love  my 
mother  more  dearly;  she  is  beside  you  in  my  heart, 
and  no  one  else  will  ever  find  a  place  there ;  she  is 
your  only  rival ;  is  that  not  equivalent  to  saying 
that  your  reign  there  will  be  undisputed?  Thus 
your  arguments  have  no  effect  upon  my  mind.  As 
for  Camille,  you  have  but  to  give  me  the  signal  and 
I  will  beg  her  to  tell  you  with  her  own  lips  that  I  do 
not  love  her;  she  is  the  mother  of  my  intelligence, 
nothing  more  or  less.  As  soon  as  I  first  saw  you, 
she  became  my  sister,  my  friend,  male  or  female, 
whichever  you  choose ;  but  we  have  no  other  claim 
upon  each  other  than  that  which  friendship  gives.  I 
took  her  for  a  woman  until  I  saw  you.  But  you 
have  proved  to  me  that  Camille  is  a  boy;  she 
smokes,  she  drinks,  she  swims,  she  hunts,  she 
rides,  she  analyzes  a  heart  and  a  book,  she  hasn't 
the  slightest  weakness,  she  marches  forward  in  her 
might;  she  has  neither  your  grace  of  movement, 
nor  your  gait,  smooth  as  the  flight  of  a  bird,  nor 
your  loving  voice,  nor  your  soft  glances,  nor  your 
graceful  carriage;  she  is  Camille  Maupin  and  noth- 
ing else ;  she  has  nothing  of  the  woman  about  her 
and  you  have  everything  that  I  love ;  it  has  seemed 
to  me  from  the  day  I  first  saw  you  as  if  you  were 
mine!     You  will  laugh  at  the  feeling,  but  it  has  not 


266  BEATRIX 

ceased  to  grow  stronger,  and  it  would  seem  to  me  to 
be  a  monstrous  thing  that  we  should  be  separated: 
you  are  my  heart,  my  life,  and  I  could  not  live  where 
you  were  not  Allow  yourself  to  love  me !  We  will 
fly,  we  will  go  away,  far  from  the  world,  to  some 
country  where  you  will  meet  no  one,  and  where  you 
will  have  only  God  and  myself  in  your  heart.  My 
mother,  who  loves  you,  will  come  some  day  to  live 
with  us.  There  are  castles  in  Ireland  and  my 
mother's  family  will  lend  us  one  to  live  in.  Mon 
Dieu!  let  us  go!  A  boat  and  boatmen,  and  we 
shall  be  there  before  anyone  knows  whither  we 
have  fled  to  avoid  the  society  you  dread  so  keenly ! 
You  have  never  been  really  loved ;  I  feel  sure  of  it 
as  I  read  your  letter  again,  and  I  think  I  can  read 
between  the  lines  that,  if  none  of  the  arguments  you 
put  forward  existed,  you  would  allow  me  to  love 
you.  Beatrix,  a  sacred  passion  wipes  out  the  past. 
Can  one  think  of  anything  but  you  when  you  are 
before  one's  eyes  ?  Ah !  I  love  you  so  dearly  that  I 
would  prefer  a  thousand  times  over  that  you  should 
be  an  infamous  creature  in  order  to  show  you  the 
power  of  my  love  by  adoring  you  as  the  most 
saintly  of  women.  You  call  my  love  an  insult  to 
you.  O  Beatrix,  you  cannot  think  it!  the  love  of 
a  noble  youth — did  you  not  call  me  that  ? — would  do 
honor  to  a  queen.  And  so,  to-morrow,  we  will  go 
as  lovers  along  the  cliffs  and  the  sea,  and  you  will 
walk  upon  the  sands  of  old  Bretagne  in  order  to  con- 
secrate them  anew  for  me !  Give  me  this  one  day 
of  happiness;    and  the  fleeting  boon, — which  will 


BEATRIX  267 

perhaps  find  no  place  in  your  memory,  alas! — will 
be  a  never-ending  source  of  joy  to  Calyste — " 

The  baroness  let  the  letter  fall  without  finishing 
it;  she  knelt  upon  a  chair  and  prayed  silently  to 
God,  imploring  him  to  preserve  her  son's  under- 
standing, to  protect  him  from  all  folly  and  error, 
and  to  turn  him  aside  from  the  path  upon  which  he 
had  embarked. 

"What  are  you  doing,  mother?"  said  Calyste. 

"I  am  praying  for  you,"  said  she,  raising  her 
tearful  eyes  to  his  face.  "I  have  just  been  guilty 
of  reading  that  letter.     My  Calyste  is  mad!" 

"With  the  sweetest  of  all  forms  of  madness," 
said  the  youth,  as  he  kissed  his  mother. 

"I  would  like  to  see  this  woman,  my  child." 

"Very  well,  mamma,"  said  Calyste,  "we  shall 
take  the  boat  for  Le  Croisic  to-morrow ;  be  on  the 
jetty." 

He  sealed  his  letter  and  started  for  Les  Touches. 
The  thing  that  alarmed  the  baroness  more  than  all 
else,  was  to  see  that  in  him  passion  was  endowed 
by  instinct  with  the  second  sight  of  consummate  ex- 
perience. Calyste  had  written  to  Beatrix  as  if  the 
Chevalier  du  Halga  had  been  at  his  elbow. 


One  of  the  keenest  pleasures  ever  enjoyed  by 
small  minds  or  by  inferior  beings  is  that  of  deceiving 
great  minds  and  catching  them  in  some  trap. 
Beatrix  knew  that  she  was  far  inferior  to  Camille 
Maupin.  The  inferiority  existed  not  only  in  the  as- 
semblage of  mental  qualities  called  talent,  but  in 
matters  of  the  heart  which  are  collectively  called 
passion. 

When  Calyste  appeared  at  Les  Touches  with  the 
impetuosity  of  a  first  love  borne  upon  the  wings  of 
hope,  the  marchioness  was  conscious  of  a  feeling  of 
keen  delight,  due  to  the  knowledge  that  she  was 
loved  by  that  adorable  youth.  She  did  not  go  so 
far  as  to  make  up  her  mind  to  give  comfort  and  en- 
couragement to  the  feeling;  she  would  exert  her 
heroism  in  restraining  this  capriccio,  as  the  Italians 
say,  considering  that  she  thereby  placed  herself 
upon  her  friend's  level ;  she  was  happy  in  being 
able  to  make  a  sacrifice  to  her.  In  a  word,  the 
petty  vanities  characteristic  of  French  women, 
which  go  to  make  up  the  famous  coquetry  to  which 
they  owe  their  superiority,  were  flattered  and  fully 
satisfied  in  her ;  although  exposed  to  great  tempta- 
tion, she  resisted,  and  her  virtues  sang  a  sweet 
chorus  of  laudation  in  her  ears.  The  two  women, 
apparently  indolent  in  the  extreme,  were  half  re- 
clining upon  the  divan  in  the  small  salon,  where 
(269) 


270  BEATRIX 

everything  was  in  such  perfect  harmony,  in  the 
midst  of  a  world  of  flowers  and  with  open  windows, 
— for  the  north  wind  had  ceased  to  blow.  A  soft 
breeze  from  the  south  ruffled  the  surface  of  the  salt 
lake  which  could  be  seen  from  the  windows,  and 
the  sand  glistened  like  gold  in  the  sunlight.  Their 
hearts  were  as  agitated  as  nature  was  tranquil,  and 
were  no  less  ardent. 

Crushed  by  the  wheels  of  the  machinery  she  had 
set  in  motion,  Camille  was  compelled  to  keep  a 
close  watch  upon  herself  because  of  the  prodigious 
craft  of  the  friendly  foe  she  had  taken  into  her  cage ; 
but,  in  order  not  to  betray  her  secret,  she  abandoned 
herself  to  rapt  contemplation  of  the  landscape;  she 
beguiled  her  suffering  by  trying  to  fathom  the  mean- 
ing of  the  movement  of  the  worlds,  and  found  God 
in  the  sublime  desert  of  the  heavens.  When  God 
is  once  recognized  by  the  sceptic  he  plunges  into 
absolute  Catholicism,  which,  viewed  as  a  system, 
is  without  a  flaw. 

In  the  morning,  Camille  had  appeared  before  the 
marchioness  with  her  brow  bathed  in  the  beams 
shed  by  her  investigations  during  a  night  passed  in 
lamentation.  Calyste  was  always  before  her  eyes 
like  a  celestial  image.  She  looked  upon  the  comely 
youth,  to  whom  she  had  devoted  her  life,  as  her 
guardian  angel.  Was  it  not  he  who  guided  her  to 
the  lofty  regions  where  suffering  ceases  beneath  the 
weight  of  incomprehensible  immensity.?  And  yet 
Beatrix's  triumphant  air  disturbed  Camille.  One 
woman  does  not  gain  such  an  advantage  over  another 


BEATRIX  271 

without  allowing  it  to  be  guessed, although  she  denies 
having  taken  it.  Nothing  more  extraordinary  can 
be  imagined  than  the  fierce  moral  contest  between 
these  two  friends,  each  of  whom  was  concealing  a 
secret  from  the  other  and  believed  the  other  to  be 
her  debtor  for  unheard-of  sacrifices. 

Calyste  arrived  with  his  letter  between  his  hand 
and  his  glove,  ready  to  slip  it  into  Beatrix's  hand. 
Camille,  who  had  not  failed  to  observe  her  friend's 
change  of  manner,  seemed  not  to  be  looking  at  her 
when  Calyste  entered  the  room,  but  was,  in  fact, 
looking  at  her  in  a  mirror.  Such  a  moment  is  a 
hazardous  period  for  all  women.  The  cleverest  as 
well  as  the  most  foolish,  the  most  candid  as  well  as 
the  most  astute,  ceases  to  be  mistress  of  her  secret; 
at  such  a  moment,  it  is  laid  bare  before  the  eyes  of 
another  woman.  Too  great  reserve  or  too  little 
reserve,  a  frank,  luminous  glance  or  a  mysterious 
lowering  of  the  eyelids, — everything  at  such  a  time 
betrays  the  feeling  that  is  most  difficult  to  conceal; 
for  there  is  an  air  of  unmistakable  coldness  about 
real  indifference  which  can  never  be  simulated. 
Women  have  a  genius  for  shades  of  manner ;  they 
resort  to  them  too  often  not  to  be  familiar  with  them 
all ;  and  on  such  occasions  their  eyes  embrace  a  rival 
from  head  to  foot;  they  detect  the  slightest  move- 
ment of  a  foot  beneath  the  dress,  the  slightest  quiver 
of  the  frame,  and  know  the  deep  significance  of 
all  that  which  to  a  man  seems  insignificant.  Two 
women  spying  upon  each  other  will  play  one  of  the 
most  admirable  comedy  scenes  that  can  be  imagined. 


272  BEATRIX 

"Calyste  has  done  some  idiotic  thing  or  other," 
thought  Camilie,  observing  in  each  of  them  the  in- 
definable manner  of  persons  who  understand  each 
other. 

There  was  no  further  stiffness  or  feigned  indiffer- 
ence about  the  marchioness ;  she  looked  at  Calyste 
as  at  something  belonging  to  herself.  The  result 
was  that  Calyste's  manner  was  most  expressive; 
he  blushed  like  a  real  culprit,  like  a  happy  man. 
He  came  to  make  final  arrangements  for  the  follow- 
ing day. 

"So  you  are  really  going  with  us,  my  dear?"  said 
Camilie. 

"Yes,"  Beatrix  replied. 

"How  did  you  know  it.!*"  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches  asked  Calyste. 

"I  came  to  find  out,"  he  answered,  in  obedience 
to  a  significant  glance  from  Madame  de  Rochefide, 
who  did  not  choose  that  her  friend  should  have  the 
least  suspicion  of  their  correspondence. 

"They  have  an  understanding  already,"  said 
Camilie  to  herself,  when  she  saw  that  glance  out  of 
the  corner  of  her  eye.  "It's  all  over,  and  there  is 
nothing  left  for  me  to  do  but  disappear." 

That  thought  was  so  crushing  to  her  that  her 
features  betrayed  a  discomposure  which  made 
Beatrix  shudder. 

"What  is  it,  my  dear?"  said  she. 

"Nothing. — Then  you  must  send  my  horses  and 
yours  on  ahead,  Calyste,  so  that  we  may  find  them 
beyond  Le  Croisic  and  ride  home  by  way  of  Batz. 


BEATRIX  273 

We  will  take  luncheon  at  Le  Croisic  and  dine  at 
Les  Touches.  You  must  engage  the  boatmen.  We 
will  start  at  half-past  eight — What  pleasure  you 
have  in  store!"  she  said  to  Beatrix.  "You  will  see 
Cambremer,  a  man  who  does  penance  on  a  rock 
for  the  wilful  murder  of  his  son.  Oh!  this  is  a 
primitive  land,  where  men  are  not  governed  by  the 
ordinary  sentiments  of  mankind.  Calyste  will  tell 
you  that  story. ' ' 

She  went  into  her  bedroom,for  she  was  suffocating. 
Calyste  delivered  his  letter,  then  followed  Camille. 

"She  loves  you,  I  think,  Calyste,  but  you  are 
concealing  some  escapade  from  me,  and  you  have 
certainly  disobeyed  my  orders,  haven't  you?" 

"She  loves  me!"  he  exclaimed,  falling  upon  a 
chair. 

Camille  put  her  head  into  the  salon;  Beatrix  had 
disappeared.  That  fact  in  itself  was  strange.  A 
woman  does  not  leave  a  room  that  contains  the  man 
she  loves,  when  she  is  certain  of  seeing  him  again, 
unless  she  has  something  better  to  do. 

"Can  she  have  a  letter  from  Calyste?"  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches  asked  herself. 

But  she  believed  the  guileless  Breton  to  be  incap- 
able of  such  a  bold  step. 

"If  you  have  disobeyed  me,  all  will  be  lost  by 
your  own  fault,"  she  said  gravely.  "Go  and  pre- 
pare for  your  bliss  to-morrow." 

She  made  a  gesture  and  Calyste  did  not  resist; 
there  are  mute  sorrows  that  possess  despotic  elo- 
quence. 


274  BEATRIX 

As  he  crossed  the  sand  and  the  marshes  on  his 
way  to  Le  Croisic  to  engage  the  boatmen,  he  was 
assailed  by  doubts.  There  was  an  ominous  ring 
to  Camille's  words,  which  betrayed  the  second  sight 
of  maternity.  When  he  returned  four  hours  later, 
quite  exhausted,  expecting  to  dine  at  Les  Touches, 
he  found  Camille's  maid  doing  sentry  duty  at  the 
gate,  waiting  to  tell  him  that  her  mistress  and  the 
marchioness  could  not  receive  him  that  evening. 
When  Calyste,  taken  aback,  attempted  to  question 
the  maid,  she  closed  the  gate  and  fled. 

Six  o'clock  was  striking  on  the  town  clock  of 
Guerande.  Calyste  returned  home,  ordered  up  the 
remains  of  the  dinner,  and  played  mouche  in  gloomy 
meditation.  These  alternatives  of  happiness  and 
despair,  the  crushing  of  his  hopes  following  close 
upon  the  certainty  that  he  was  loved,  rent  the 
youthful  heart,  which  had  soared  so  high  in  its 
flight  toward  heaven  that  the  fall  was  sure  to  be 
crushing. 

"What  is  troubling  you,  dear  Calyste?"  his 
mother  whispered  in  his  ear. 

"Nothing,"  he  replied,  looking  into  her  face  with 
eyes  from  which  the  light  of  the  soul  and  the  fire  of 
love  had  departed. 

Despair,  not  hope,  gives  the  measure  of  our  am- 
bition. We  gloat  in  secret  over  the  beautiful  poems 
of  hope,  whereas  sorrow  shows  itself  without  a  veil. 

"Calyste,  you  are  not  polite,"  said  Charlotte, 
after  vainly  trying  upon  him  all  the  little  provincial 
cajoleries  which  always  degenerate  into  sulkiness. 


BEATRIX  275 

"I  am  tired,"  he  said,  rising  and  bidding  the 
company  good- night. 

"Calyste  is  sadly  changed,"  said  Mademoiselle 
de  Pen-Hoel. 

"We  have  no  lovely  dresses  trimmed  with  lace, 
we  don't  flutter  our  sleeves  this  way,  we  don't 
strike  attitudes  like  this,  we  haven't  the  trick  of 
looking  sidewise  and  turning  our  heads,"  said 
Charlotte,  imitating  and  exaggerating  the  mar- 
chioness's manner  and  pose  and  expression.  "We 
haven't  a  voice  that  comes  from  the  head,  nor  that 
fascinating  little  cough,  ahem!  ahem!  that  sounds 
like  a  ghost's  sigh ;  we  are  unfortunate  enough  to 
enjoy  robust  health  and  to  love  our  friends  without 
coquetry;  when  we  look  at  them  we  don't  seem  to 
be  pricking  them  with  a  dart  or  examining  them 
with  hypocritical  eyes.  We  don't  know  how  to 
bend  our  heads  over  like  a  weeping  willow  and 
affect  affability  by  raising  them  again  this  way!" 

Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  could  not  restrain  a 
smile  at  her  niece's  gestures;  but  neither  the  baron 
nor  the  chevalier  understood  this  provincial  satire 
upon  Paris. 

"The  Marquise  de  Rochefide  is  very  beautiful, 
however,"  said  the  old  maid. 

"My  dear,  I  know  that  she  is  going  to  Le  Croisic 
to-morrow,"  the  baroness  said  to  her  husband; 
"we  will  walk  in  that  direction,  for  I  am  very 
anxious  to  meet  her." 

While  Calyste  was  cudgeling  his  brains  to  guess 
what  it  could  be  that  had  closed  the  doors  of  Les 


276  BEATRIX 

Touches  to  him,  a  scene  took  place  between  the  two 
friends  which  was  destined  to  have  a  marked  in- 
fluence upon  the  events  of  the  morrow. 

Calyste's  letter  had  aroused  unfamiliar  emotions 
in  Madame  de  Rochefide's  heart  Every  woman  is 
not  the  object  of  so  fresh,  so  artless,  so  sincere  and 
so  absolute  a  passion  as  that  child's.  Beatrix  had, 
in  the  past,  given  more  love  than  she  had  received. 
After  having  been  a  slave,  she  felt  an  inexplicable 
longing  to  play  the  tyrant  Amid  her  delight,  as 
she  read  and  reread  Calyste's  letter,  she  felt  the 
sting  of  a  cruel  thought  What  had  Calyste  and 
Camille  been  doing  together  since  Claude  Vignon's 
departure?  If  Calyste  did  not  love  Camille  and 
Camille  knew  it,  how,  then,  did  they  employ 
their  afternoons?  Memory  mischievously  placed 
Camille's  harangues  side  by  side  with  that  query  in 
her  mind.  It  seemed  to  her  as  if  a  mocking  devil 
suddenly  displayed  in  a  magic  mirror  the  portrait  of 
that  heroic  creature  with  certain  gestures  and  cer- 
tain glances  that  completed  Beatrix's  enlightenment. 
Instead  of  being  on  a  level  with  Camille,  she  was 
crushed  by  her;  instead  of  outwitting  her,  she  was 
outwitted  by  her ;  she  herself  was  simply  a  toy  that 
Camille  wished  to  give  her  child,  whom  she  loved 
with  an  extraordinary,  unselfish  love. 

To  a  woman  like  Beatrix,  such  a  discovery  was  a 
thunderbolt  She  reviewed  minutely  the  events  of 
the  past  week.  In  a  moment,  the  rOles  played  by 
Camille  and  by  herself  were  unfolded  before  her  in 
their  full  meaning;  she  felt  strangely  humiliated. 


BEATRIX  277 

In  her  paroxysm  of  jealous  anger  against  Camilla, 
she  fancied  that  she  could  detect  a  purpose  on  her 
part  to  be  revenged  upon  Conti.  Perhaps  the 
memory  of  the  past  two  years  had  its  effect  upon 
those  last  two  weeks. 

Once  fairly  launched  upon  the  downward  slope  of 
suspicion,  conjecture  and  indignation,  Beatrix  did 
not  stop  half  way;  she  paced  up  and  down  her 
room,  assailed  by  violent  impulses,  sitting  down  at 
intervals  and  trying  to  determine  what  course  to 
pursue ;  but  the  dinner  hour  arrived  and  found  her 
still  undecided,  and  she  took  her  place  at  the  table 
without  changing  her  dress. 

When  her  rival  entered  the  room,  Camille  in- 
stantly divined  all  that  had  taken  place.  Not  only 
was  Beatrix  not  dressed  for  dinner  but  her  face  wore 
a  cold,  reserved  expression  which,  to  so  perspica- 
cious an  observer  as  Camille,  denoted  the  hostility 
of  an  embittered  heart  Camille  at  once  left  the 
room  and  gave  the  order  which  was  to  cause 
Calyste  such  astonishment;  she  thought  that,  if  the 
ingenuous  Breton  should  appear  with  his  insensate 
love  in  the  midst  of  the  quarrel,  he  would  be  very 
likely  to  compromise  the  future  of  his  passion  by 
some  idiotic  outburst,  so  that  he  would  never  see 
Beatrix  again ;  she  desired  that  the  impending  duel 
of  dissimulation  should  be  fought  without  witnesses. 
Beatrix  without  auxiliaries  was  sure  to  be  at  her 
mercy.  Camille  knew  the  selfishness  of  her  heart, 
the  pettiness  of  that  mighty  pride  to  which  she  had 
so  justly  applied  the  name  of  obstinacy. 


278  BEATRIX 

The  dinner  was  a  gloomy  affair.  Each  of  the  two 
women  had  too  much  good  sense  and  good  taste  to 
bandy  words  before  the  servants  or  to  have  them 
listening  at  the  doors.  Camille's  manner  was 
gentle  and  kindly,  she  was  so  sure  of  her  supe- 
riority! The  marchioness  was  hard  and  satirical, 
for  she  knew  that  she  was  being  played  with  like 
a  child.  Throughout  the  dinner  they  fought  a  battle 
of  glances,  gestures  and  veiled  phrases  which  con- 
veyed no  idea  to  the  servants,  but  which  told  that 
a  fierce  storm  was  brewing.  When  it  was  time  to 
return  upstairs,  Camille  maliciously  offered  her  arm 
to  Beatrix,  who  pretended  not  to  see  her  friend's 
gesture  and  hurried  out  alone  into  the  hall.  When 
the  coffee  was  served.  Mademoiselle  des  Touches 
dismissed  her  footman,  thereby  giving  the  signal  for 
battle. 

"The  romances  you  act,  my  dear,  are  a  little 
more  dangerous  than  those  you  write,"  said  the 
marchioness. 

"They  have  one  great  advantage,  however," 
said  Camille,  lighting  a  cigarette. 

"What  is  that?"  queried  Beatrix. 

"They  are  unpublished,  my  angel." 

"Will  you  publish  the  one  into  which  you  have 
introduced  me?" 

"I  have  no  calling  for  the  trade  of  CEdipus;  you 
have  the  wit  and  beauty  of  the  Sphinx,  I  know ; 
but  don't  propound  riddles  to  me,  speak  plainly,  my 
dear  Beatrix." 

"When  we  ask  a  devil  to  assist  us  to  make  men 


BEATRIX  279 

happy,  to  entertain  them,  to  make  ourselves  agree- 
able to  them  and  while  away  their  ennui — " 

"The  men  later  reproach  us  with  our  efforts  and 
struggles,  fancying  that  they  are  inspired  by  the 
genius  of  depravity,"  interrupted  Camille,  laying 
aside  her  cigarette. 

"They  forget  the  love  that  carried  us  beyond  our- 
selves and  justified  our  excesses;  for  to  what  point 
do  we  not  go!  But  they  are  only  acting  their  part 
as  men,  they  are  ungrateful  and  unfair,"  continued 
Beatrix.  "Women  understand  each  other;  they 
know  how  proud  and  noble  and,  let  us  say  the  word, 
how  virtuous  their  attitude  is  under  all  circum- 
stances. But,  Camille,  I  have  come  to  realize  the  truth 
of  the  criticisms  of  which  you  have  sometimes  com- 
plained. Yes,  my  dear,  you  have  something  of  the 
man  about  you,  you  act  like  them,  you  stop  at  noth- 
ing, and,  even  if  you  haven't  all  their  advantages, 
you  have  their  habits  of  thought,  and  you  share 
their  contempt  for  your  own  sex.  I  have  no  reason 
to  be  pleased  with  you,  my  dear,  and  I  am  too  out- 
spoken to  conceal  it.  No  one  else,  perhaps,  could 
inflict  so  deep  a  wound  upon  my  heart  as  that  from 
which  I  am  now  suffering.  If  you  are  not  a  woman 
where  love  is  concerned,  you  become  one  again  in 
the  matter  of  revenge.  It  requires  a  woman  of 
genius  to  search  out  the  most  sensitive  point  in  our 
weak  natures ;  I  am  speaking,  my  dear,  of  Calyste 
and  the  trickery — that  is  the  proper  word — you  have 
employed  against  me.  How  low  have  you  descended, 
Camille  Maupin,  and  with  what  purpose.-*" 


280  BEATRIX 

"Still  more  and  more  sphinx-like!"  said  Camille, 
with  a  smile. 

"You  wanted  me  to  throw  myself  at  Calyste's 
head ;  I  am  still  too  young  to  act  in  any  such  way. 
To  me  love  is  love  with  its  fiendish  jealousy  and  its 
tyrannical  will,  I  am  not  an  authoress:  it  is  im- 
possible for  me  to  detect  ideas  in  sentiments — " 

"You  fancy  yourself  capable  of  loving  madly,  do 
you.?"  queried  Camille.  "Don't  be  alarmed,  you 
still  have  a  fair  share  of  intelligence.  You  slander 
yourself,  my  dear :  you  are  sufficiently  cold-blooded 
always  to  make  your  head  the  judge  of  the  lofty 
deeds  of  your  heart." 

This  epigrammatic  remark  made  the  marchioness 
blush;  she  darted  at  Camille  a  glance  overflowing 
with  hatred — a  venomous  glance — and  laid  her 
hand,  without  an  effort,  upon  the  most  deadly  arrows 
in  her  quiver.  Camille,  smoking  cigarettes  all  the 
while,  listened  coolly  to  the  furious  tirade,  which 
bristled  with  such  stinging  insults  that  it  is  impos- 
sible to  quote  it.  Enraged  by  her  adversary's 
calmness,  Beatrix  indulged  in  shocking  personali- 
ties apropos  of  Mademoiselle  des  Touches'  age. 

"Is  that  all.?" queried  the  latter,  emitting  a  cloud 
of  smoke.     "Do  you  love  Calyste?" 

"Indeed  I  do  not." 

"So  much  the  better,"  retorted  Camille.  "For 
my  part,  I  do  love  him,  far  too  much  for  my  own 
peace  of  mind.  Perhaps  he  may  have  a  passing 
fancy  for  you,  for  you  are  the  most  delicious  blonde 
in  the  world,  and  I  am  as  black  as  a  mole ;  you  are 


BEATRIX  281 

slender  and  willowy,  and  I  have  too  much  dignity 
in  my  figure;  lastly,  you  are  young!  that  is  the 
vital  point;  and  you  have  had  no  mercy  on  me. 
You  have  made  an  unfair  use  of  your  womanly  ad- 
vantages against  me,  just  exactly  as  a  paltry  news- 
paper abuses  the  privilege  of  ridicule.  1  have  done 
all  I  could  do  to  prevent  what  is  happening  now," 
she^aid,  looking  at  the  ceiling.  "However  little 
womanliness  I  may  possess,  I  am  still  enough  of  a 
woman,  my  dear,  to  make  my  own  assistance  ne- 
cessary to  a  rival  to  enable  her  to  triumph  over 
me." — The  marchioness  was  cut  to  the  heart  by 
this  savage  thrust,  uttered  in  the  most  innocent  way. 
— "You  take  me  for  a  perfect  fool  of  a  woman  be- 
cause you  believe  what  Calyste  chooses  to  make 
you  believe.  1  am  neither  so  great  nor  so  small;  I 
am  a  woman  and  very  much  a  woman.  Put  aside 
your  high  and  mighty  airs  and  give  me  your  hand," 
continued  Camille,  seizing  Beatrix's  hand.  "You 
are  not  in  love  with  Calyste — that  is  the  truth,  isn't 
it?  In  that  case,  don't  lose  your  head!  be  stern  and 
cold  and  harsh  to  him  to-morrow;  he  will  end  by 
submitting,  after  the  quarrel  I  propose  to  have  with 
him,  and  especially  after  the  reconciliation,  for  I 
haven't  exhausted  the  resources  of  our  arsenal,  and, 
after  all,  pleasure  always  gets  the  better  of  desire. 
But  Calyste  is  a  Breton.  If  he  persists  in  paying 
court  to  you,  just  tell  me  so  frankly,  and  you  shall 
go  from  here  to  a  little  country  house  of  mine  within 
six  leagues  of  Paris,  where  you  will  find  all  the 
conveniences  of  life,  and  where  Conti  can  visit  you. 


282  BEATRIX 

As  to  Calyste's  slandering  me,  why,  bless  my  soul ! 
the  purest  love  lies  six  times  a  day,  and  its  im- 
postures demonstrate  its  strength." 

There  was  upon  Camille's  face  an  expression  of 
superb  indifference  which  made  the  marchioness 
anxious  and  fearful.     She  knew  not  how  to  reply. 

Camille  thereupon  dealt  the  final  blow. 

"I  am  more  trustful  and  better-tempered  than 
you,"  she  continued;  "I  do  not  credit  you  with  the 
purpose  to  cloak  by  recrimination  an  attack  which 
would  endanger  my  life:  you  know  me;  I  shall  not 
survive  the  loss  of  Calyste,  and  I  must  lose  him 
sooner  or  later.  Calyste  loves  me,  however,  I  know 
that." 

"Here  is  his  reply  to  a  letter  in  which  I  talked  of 
you  and  nothing  else,"  said  Beatrix,  handing  her 
Calyste's  letter. 

Camille  took  it  and  read  it;  but,  as  she  read,  her 
eyes  filled  with  tears;  she  wept  as  all  women  weep 
in  their  bitter  grief. 

"Mow  Dieu!**  she  murmured,  "he  loves  her.  So 
I  must  die  without  ever  being  understood  or  loved!" 

She  sat  for  some  moments  with  her  head  resting 
upon  Beatrix's  shoulder:  her  grief  was  genuine; 
she  felt  to  the  inmost  recesses  of  her  being  the  ter- 
rible blow  that  the  Baronne  du  Guenic  had  received 
upon  reading  that  letter. 

"Do  you  love  him?"  she  suddenly  demanded, 
sitting  erect  and  looking  Beatrix  in  the  face. 
"Have  you  for  him  the  boundless  adoration  that 
triumphs  over  all  sorrows  and  survives  contempt, 


I 


BEATRIX  283 

treachery  and  the  certainty  of  never  possessing  his 
love  again  ?  Do  you  love  him  for  himself  and  for 
the  mere  pleasure  of  loving  him?" 

"Dear  friend!"  said  the  marchioness,  deeply 
moved.  "You  may  set  your  mind  at  rest,  1  will  go 
away  to-morrow." 

"Do  not  go  away,  for  he  really  loves  you,  I  can 
see  that!  And  I  love  him  so  dearly  that  it  would 
drive  me  to  despair  to  see  him  unhappy  and  suffer- 
ing. I  had  formed  many  plans  for  him ;  but,  if  he 
loves  you,  it  is  all  over." 

"I  do  love  him,  Camille,"  said  the  marchioness 
thereupon,  with  adorable  ingenuousness,  but  blush- 
ing as  she  said  it. 

"You  love  him  and  you  can  resist  him.'"  cried 
Camille.     "Ah!  you  don't  love  him!" 

"I  don't  know  what  new  virtues  he  has  awakened 
in  my  heart,  but  certain  it  is  that  he  has  made  me 
ashamed  of  myself,"  said  Beatrix.  "I  wish  I  were 
virtuous  and  at  liberty  to  sacrifice  to  him  something 
more  than  the  remains  of  my  heart  and  of  my  in- 
famous slavery.  I  do  not  wish  that  either  his 
destiny  or  my  own  should  be  left  uncompleted. " 

"Cold  heart:  to  love  and  count  the  cost!"  ex- 
claimed Camille,  with  a  sort  of  horror. 

"Call  it  what  you  choose,  but  1  do  not  propose  to 
ruin  his  life,  to  hang  about  his  neck  like  a  stone, 
and  to  become  a  source  of  everlasting  regret  If  I 
can't  be  his  wife,  I  will  not  be  his  mistress.  He  has 
— You  are  not  laughing  at  me?  no?  Well,  his 
adorable  love  has  purified  me." 


284  BEATRIX 

Camille  bestowed  upon  Beatrix  the  most  savage, 
ferocious  glance  that  ever  jealous  woman  bestowed 
upon  her  rival. 

*'Upon  that  ground,"  said  she,  "I  thought  that  I 
stood  alone.  Beatrix,  those  words  separate  us  for- 
ever, we  are  no  longer  friends.  We  are  at  the  be- 
ginning of  a  mortal  combat  I  say  to  you  now :  you 
shall  succumb  or  you  shall  fly — " 

With  that,  she  rushed  into  her  bedroom  after  she 
had  glared  at  the  stupefied  Beatrix,  with  the  features 
of  an  infuriated  lioness. 

"Will  you  go  to  Le  Croisic  to-morrow?"  she  said 
a  moment  later,  raising  the  portiere. 

"Certainly,"  the  marchioness  replied  haughtily. 
"I  will  not  fly  and  1  will  not  succumb." 

"I  play  with  my  cards  on  the  table:  I  shall  write 
to  Conti,"  rejoined  Camille. 

Beatrix  became  as  white  as  her  gauze  scarf. 

"Each  of  us  is  playing  for  her  life,"  she  replied, 
not  knowing  which  way  to  turn. 

The  violent  passions  aroused  between  the  two 
women  by  this  scene  were  allayed  during  the 
night  They  both  took  thought  to  themselves  and 
reverted  to  the  system  of  deceitful  temporization 
which  possesses  a  great  attraction  for  the  majority 
of  women ;  an  excellent  system  as  between  women 
and  men,  but  very  bad  as  between  woman  and 
woman.  In  the  midst  of  this  last  tempest,  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches  heard  the  loud  voice  that 
triumphs  over  the  bravest  Beatrix  listened  to 
the  counsels  of   worldly  jurisprudence;  she   was 


BEATRIX  285 

afraid  of  the  contempt  of  society.  Felicite's  final 
ruse,  therefore,  mingled  with  the  accents  of  most 
fiendish  jealousy,  achieved  a  complete  success. 
Calyste's  error  was  repaired,  but  any  fresh  indis- 
cretion might  destroy  his  hopes  forever. 


It  was  the  latter  part  of  the  month  of  August  and 
the  skies  were  magnificently  pure.  On  the  horizon, 
the  ocean  had  a  tint  as  of  molten  silver,  as  in  the 
southern  seas,  and  tiny  wavelets  rippled  upon  the 
shore.  A  sort  of  luminous  smoke,  caused  by  the 
sun's  rays  falling  perpendicularly  upon  the  sand, 
produced  an  atmosphere  at  least  very  similar  to 
that  of  the  tropics.  The  salt  appeared  in  little 
white  blossoms  on  the  surface  of  the  ponds.  The 
courageous  paludiers,  clad  in  white  as  if  to  resist 
the  action  of  the  sun,  were  at  their  posts  early  in 
the  morning,  armed  with  their  long  rakes,  some 
leaning  upon  the  low  mud  walls  which  mark  the 
boundaries  of  the  different  properties,  watching  the 
chemical  operations  of  nature,  familiar  to  them 
from  childhood;  others  playing  with  their  wives 
and  small  children.  The  green  dragoons  known  as 
customs  officers  were  tranquilly  smoking  their  pipes. 
There  was  a  flavor  of  the  Orient  in  the  picture;  for 
certain  it  is  that  a  Parisian,  suddenly  transported 
thither,  would  not  have  believed  that  he  was  in 
France. 

The  baron  and  baroness,  who  had  pretended  that 
they  were  going  to  see  how  the  salt  harvest  was 
progressing,  were  upon  the  jetty  admiring  the 
peaceful  landscape,  where  no  sound  could  be  heard 
save  the  rhythmical  moaning  of  the  waves;  and 
(287) 


288  BEATRIX 

gazing  at  the  boats  ploughing  through  the  water, 
and  at  the  green  girdle  of  cultivated  fields,  the 
effect  of  which  was  the  more  charming  because  it  is 
exceedingly  rare  upon  the  always  desolate  shores  of 
old  Ocean. 

"Well,  my  friends,  I  have  seen  the  marshes  of 
Guerandeonce  more  before  I  die,"  said  the  baron  to 
the  paludiers  who  gathered  on  the  edge  of  the  marsh 
to  salute  him. 

"Do  the  Du  Guenics  ever  die?"  said  a. paludier. 

At  that  moment,  the  party  from  Les  Touches  ar- 
rived at  the  narrow  path.  The  marchioness  walked 
forward  alone,  Calyste  and  Camille  following  her 
arm  in  arm.     Twenty  yards  behind  came  Gasselin. 

"There  are  my  father  and  mother,"  said  the 
young  man  to  Camille. 

The  marchioness  stopped.  Madame  du  Guenic 
experienced  a  most  violent  feeling  of  repulsion  as 
her  eyes  fell  upon  Beatrix,  who,  however,  was 
dressed  to  the  best  advantage:  an  Italian  hat  with 
a  broad  brim,  trimmed  with  bluebells,  and  beneath 
it  her  hair  neatly  crimped ;  a  dress  of  unbleached 
linen  of  a  grayish  shade,  a  blue  sash  with  long  float- 
ing ends,  and  the  manner  of  a  princess  disguised  as 
a  shepherdess. 

"She  has  no  heart,"  said  the  baroness  to  herself. 

"Mademoiselle,"  said  Calyste  to  Camille,  "this 
is  Madame  du  Guenic  and  my  father." 

Then  he  said  to  the  baron  and  baroness : 

"Mademoiselle  des  Touches  and  Madame  la  Mar- 
quise de  Rochefide,  nee  De  Casteran,  father." 


BEATRIX  289 

The  baron  saluted  Mademoiselle  des  Touches, 
who  made  a  humble  and  most  grateful  obeisance  to 
the  baroness. 

"She  really  loves  my  son,"  Fanny  thought; 
"she  seems  to  wish  to  thank  me  for  bringing 
Calyste  into  the  world." 

"You  have  come,  as  I  have,  to  see  if  the  crop  will 
be  a  good  one ;  but  you  have  better  reasons  than  I 
for  your  curiosity,"  said  the  baron  to  Camille,  "for 
you  have  a  proprietary  interest,  mademoiselle." 

"Mademoiselle  is  the  richest  of  all  the  proprie- 
tors," said  one  of  the  paludiers,  "and  may  God  pre- 
serve her !  she  is  a  good  lady. " 

The  two  parties  exchanged  salutations  and 
parted. 

"One  would  say  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  was 
under  thirty,"  said  the  baron  to  his  wife.  "She  is 
very  beautiful.  And  Calyste  prefers  that  jade  of  a 
Parisian  marchioness  to  the  excellent  child  of  Bre- 
tagne,  does  he?" 

"Alas!  yes,"  said  the  baroness. 

A  boat  was  waiting  at  the  foot  of  the  jetty,  and 
the  party  embarked  without  cheerfulness.  The 
marchioness  was  cold  and  dignified.  Camille  had 
scolded  Calyste  for  his  failure  to  obey,  while  ex- 
plaining to  him  the  present  position  of  his  affair  of 
the  heart.  Calyste,  plunged  in  dejection,  glanced 
at  Beatrix  with  eyes  in  which  love  and  hate  strug- 
gled for  the  mastery.  Not  a  word  was  said  during 
the  brief  passage  from  the  jetty  at  Guerande  to  the 
further  side  of  the  harbor  of  Le  Croisic,  where  the 

'9 


290  BEATRIX 

salt  was  shipped  after  it  had  been  brought  thither 
in  great  earthen  vessels  by  women  who  balanced 
them  on  their  heads  in  such  a  way  as  to  resemble 
caryatides.  These  women  go  barefooted  and  wear 
only  a  very  short  skirt  Many  of  them  carelessly 
allow  the  handkerchiefs  that  cover  their  bosoms  to 
fly  about  in  the  wind;  some  wear  nothing  but  a 
chemise  and  they  are  the  proudest  of  all ;  for  the 
less  clothing  women  wear,  the  more  noble  modesty 
they  display. 

The  small  Danish  craft  had  finished  taking  in  her 
cargo.  The  landing  of  the  two  lovely  women  there- 
fore aroused  the  curiosity  of  the  unoccupied  salt 
carriers;  and  to  escape  their  scrutiny  as  well  as  to 
do  Calyste  a  service,  Camille  walked  swiftly  away 
toward  the  cliffs,  leaving  him  to  Beatrix.  Gasselin 
put  at  least  two  hundred  paces  between  his  young 
master  and  himself. 

Toward  the  sea,  the  peninsula  of  Le  Croisic  is 
bordered  with  granite  cliffs  of  such  extraordinarily 
capricious  shapes  that  they  can  be  thoroughly  ap- 
preciated only  by  travelers  who  have  had  an  oppor- 
tunity to  establish  comparisons  between  them  and 
other  grand  spectacles  of  nature  at  its  wildest.  It 
may  be  said  that  the  cliffs  of  Le  Croisic  are  as 
superior  to  other  similar  formations  as  the  road  to 
La  Grande  Chartreuse  is  admitted  to  be  to  other 
narrow  valleys.  Neither  the  shores  of  Corsica, 
where  the  granite  assumes  very  singular  forms,  nor 
those  of  Sardinia,  where  nature  has  exerted  herself 
to  produce  grand  and  awe-inspiring  effects,  nor  the 


BEATRIX  291 

basaltic  cliffs  of  the  northern  seas  are  so  absolutely 
unique  in  their  singularity.  Caprice  has  run  riot 
there,  composing  endless  arabesques,  in  which  the 
most  fantastic  figures  are  twined  and  intertwined. 
Every  imaginable  shape  may  be  found  there.  The 
imagination  may  well  be  fatigued  by  this  vast  gal- 
lery of  monstrosities,  which  the  sea  invades  when 
the  wind  blows  a  gale ;  and  it  has  in  the  course  of 
ages  worn  all  the  rough  surfaces  smooth.  Beneath 
a  natural  arch,  of  a  bold  design  imitated  at  a  dis- 
tance by  Brunelleschi — for  the  greatest  efforts  of  art 
are  always  a  faltering  copy  of  the  effects  of  nature 
— you  will  find  a  basin  polished  like  a  marble  bath- 
tub, its  bottom  covered  with  fine  smooth  white  sand, 
where  you  can  bathe  fearlessly  in  four  feet  of  luke- 
warm water.  As  you  proceed,  you  gaze  admiringly 
at  the  cool  little  bays,  sheltered  by  rough-hewn  but 
majestic  gateways  after  the  style  of  those  at  the 
Pitti  Palace,  that  other  copy  of  Nature's  caprices. 
The  ascents  and  descents  are  without  number; 
nothing  is  lacking  that  the  most  fertile  imagination 
can  conceive  or  desire. 

There  can  be  seen  too — and  a  very  rare  thing  it 
is  on  the  shore  of  the  ocean ;  so  rare  that  this  is 
perhaps  the  only  instance — a  large  thicket — buisson 
— of  the  plant  to  which  that  word  owes  its  existence 
— the  buis  or  box.  This  box,  the  greatest  curiosity 
in  all  Le  Croisic,  where  trees  cannot  grow,  is  about 
a  league  from  the  harbor,  at  the  extreme  end  of  the 
peninsula.  Upon  one  of  the  headlands  formed  by 
the  granite,  which  rise  above  the  water  to  a  height 


292  BEATRIX 

that  the  waves  never  attain,  even  in  the  most  vio- 
lent storms,  the  caprice  of  the  floods  from  above  has 
worn  away  a  hollow  trough  projecting  about  four  feet 
from  the  southern  face  of  the  cliff.  In  this  cleft, 
chance,  or  it  may  be  the  hand  of  man,  has  deposited 
sufficient  vegetable  mould  to  nourish  a  thick,  flour- 
ishing bush  of  box,  sown  there,  doubtless,  by  the 
birds.  The  condition  of  the  roots  indicates  that  it 
is  at  least  three  hundred  years  old.  Below  is  a 
sheer  precipice.  The  commotion  of  the  waves,  the 
marks  of  which  are  written  in  ineffaceable  charac- 
ters all  along  this  coast,  swept  the  fragments  of 
granite  away,  no  one  can  say  whither.  The  sea 
flows  to  the  base  of  this  cliff  without  encountering  a 
reef,  and  is  five  hundred  feet  deep  at  that  point; 
close  by  are  rocks  just  awash,  their  location  being 
indicated  and  circumscribed  by  boiling  foam,  like 
the  ring  at  a  circus.  It  requires  some  courage  and 
resolution  to  climb  to  the  top  of  this  miniature  Gi- 
braltar, which  is  almost  round  and  from  which  a  sud- 
den gust  of  wind  might  hurl  the  venturesome 
traveler  into  the  sea,  or,  worse  still,  upon  the  rocks 
below.  This  gigantic  sentinel  resembles  the  watch 
towers  on  the  old  chateaux  from  which  the  country 
for  miles  around  could  be  seen,  so  that  preparations 
could  be  made  to  resist  attack ;  from  there,  you  can 
see  the  steeple  and  the  barren  fields  of  Le  Croisic, 
the  sands  and  dunes  that  are  a  constant  menace  to 
the  tilled  lands  and  have  invaded  the  territory  of 
the  village  of  Batz.  Some  ancient  worthies  assert 
that,  in  the  very  distant  past,  there  was  a  fortified 


BEATRIX  293 

chateau  on  this  spot  The  sardine  fishermen  have 
given  a  name  to  the  rock,  which  can  be  seen  a  long 
way  out  at  sea ;  but  we  crave  forgiveness  for  having 
forgotten  that  Breton  appellation,  which  is  as  hard 
to  pronounce  as  to  remember. 

Calyste  led  Beatrix  to  this  elevated  spot,  from 
which  there  is  a  superb  view,  and  where  the  fanci- 
ful shape  of  the  granite  surpasses  all  that  can  have 
aroused  one's  amazed  admiration  along  the  sandy 
road  that  skirts  the  shore. 

It  is  needless  to  explain  whyCamille  had  hurried 
on  ahead.  Like  a  wounded  wild  beast,  she  longed  for 
solitude;  she  wandered  about  among  the  caves,  re- 
appeared upon  points  of  rock,  hunted  the  crabs  from 
their  holes  or  surprised  them  in  the  act  of  commit- 
ting some  of  their  amusing  peccadilloes.  In  order 
not  to  be  embarrassed  by  her  female  garb,  she  had 
donned  a  pair  of  trousers  with  embroidered  ruffles, 
a  short  blouse,  a  beaver  hat,  and  had  for  her  walking 
stick  a  hunting  crop,  for  she  always  prided  her- 
self upon  her  strength  and  agility;  thus  attired, 
she  was  a  hundred  times  lovelier  than  Beatrix;  she 
wore  a  little  red  China  silk  shawl  with  the  ends 
crossed  upon  her  bosom  as  such  things  are  worn  by 
children. 

For  some  time,  Beatrix  and  Calyste  caught  sight 
of  her  at  intervals,  flitting  over  the  peaks  and 
chasms  like  a  wiII-o*-the-wisp,  trying  to  turn  her 
thoughts  from  her  suffering  by  defying  danger. 
She  was  the  first  to  reach  the  rock  where  the  box 
grows,   and  sat  down  in  the  shade  in  one  of  the 


294  BEATRIX 

hollows,  absorbed  in  thought.  What  could  a  woman 
like  her  do  with  her  old  age,  after  she  had  drained 
the  cup  of  glory  which  all  great  talents,  too  greedy 
to  enjoy  the  dull  pleasures  of  self-esteem  one  by  one, 
empty  at  a  draught  ?  She  has  since  admitted  that 
on  that  spot  one  of  the  reflections  suggested  by  a 
trifle,  by  one  of  those  accidents  which  seem  of  small 
account,  perhaps,  to  ordinary  people,  but  which  pre- 
sent a  world  of  reflections  to  great  minds,  led  her  to 
determine  upon  the  singular  act  by  which  she  was 
to  sever  all  connection  with  social  life.  She  took 
from  her  pocket  a  little  box  in  which  she  had  put 
some  strawberry  pastilles,  in  case  of  thirst;  she 
took  several  of  them,  but,  as  she  was  eating  them, 
she  instinctively  reflected  that,  although  the  straw- 
berries no  longer  existed,  they  nevertheless  lived 
again  in  their  essential  qualities.  From  that,  she 
concluded  that  it  might  well  be  the  same  with  our- 
selves. The  sea,  thereupon,  appeared  to  her  as  an 
image  of  the  infinite.  No  great  mind,  admitting  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  can  escape  the  idea  of  the 
infinite  without  coming  to  believe  in  some  state  of 
future  blessedness.  That  idea  was  still  in  her  mind 
when  she  put  her  flagon  of  Portugal  water  to  her 
nose.  Thereupon,  her  manoeuvring  to  deliver 
Beatrix  over  to  Calyste  seemed  to  her  a  very  base 
proceeding:  she  felt  that  the  woman  was  dying  in 
her,  setting  free  the  noble,  angelic  creature  hitherto 
veiled  by  the  flesh.  Her  vast  intellect,  her  learning, 
her  stores  of  knowledge,  her  pretended  passions  had 
brought  her  face  to  face  with  what.? — who  would 


BEATRIX  295 

have  dared  predict  it  ? — with  the  fecund  mother,  the 
consoler  of  the  afflicted,  the  Holy  Roman  Church, 
so  gentle  to  the  penitent,  so  poetic  with  the  poets, 
so  artless  with  children,  so  profound  and  mys- 
terious to  restless,  untamed  spirits,  that  one  and  all 
can  always  seek  refuge  in  her  bosom,  and  satisfy 
all  their  insatiable,  incessantly  aroused  curiosity. 
She  glanced  back  over  the  detours  Calyste  had 
induced  her  to  make  and  compared  them  to  the 
paths  that  wind  in  and  out  among  those  cliffs. 
Calyste  was  still,  in  her  eyes,  the  lovely  messenger 
from  Heaven,  her  divine  guide.  She  put  earthly 
love  to  silence  with  divine  love. 

After  they  had  walked  along  for  some  time  with- 
out speaking,  Calyste,  at  an  exclamation  from 
Beatrix  concerning  the  grandeur  of  the  ocean, 
which  is  so  different  from  the  Mediterranean,  could 
not  refrain  from  comparing  it  with  his  love  in 
purity,  in  intensity,  in  agitation  and  in  extent 

"It  is  bordered  by  cliffs,"  said  Beatrix  with  a 
laugh. 

"When  you  speak  so  to  me,"  he  replied,  with  a 
sublime  glance  at  her,  "I  see  you  and  hear  your 
voice  and  in  that  way  can  be  as  patient  as  the  angels ; 
but  when  I  am  alone,  you  would  pity  me  if  you 
could  see  me.  At  such  times,  my  mother  weeps 
over  my  suffering." 

"Come,  Calyste,  we  must  have  done  with  this," 
said  the  marchioness  returning  to  the  sandy  path. 
"It  may  be  that  we  have  reached  the  only  appropri- 
ate place  for  saying  such  things  as  I  am  about  to 


296  BEATRIX 

say,  for  never  in  my  life  have  I  seen  nature  in  more 
perfect  harmony  with  my  thoughts.  I  have  seen 
Italy,  where  everything  speaks  of  love ;  1  have  seen 
Switzerland,  where  everything  is  fresh  and  bloom- 
ing and  expresses  true  happiness  of  a  laborious  kind ; 
where  the  verdure,  the  placid  lakes,  the  most  joyous 
landscapes  are  weighed  down  by  the  snow-covered 
Alps;  but  I  have  seen  nothing  which  depicts  more 
truly  the  scorching  barrenness  of  my  life  than  yon- 
der little  plain  parched  by  the  sea-breezes,  corroded 
by  the  saline  exhalations,  where  agriculture  strug- 
gles dejectedly  in  sight  of  the  mighty  ocean,  in 
sight  of  the  flower  gardens  from  which  the  towers 
of  your  Guerande  arise.  Such,  Calyste,  is  Beatrix. 
So  do  not  attach  yourself  to  her.  I  love  you,  but  I 
will  never  be  yours  in  any  sense  of  the  word,  for  I 
am  conscious  of  the  desolation  that  reigns  in  my 
heart  Ah !  you  cannot  guess  how  cruel  I  am  to 
myself  in  speaking  thus  to  you.  No,  you  shall  not 
see  your  idol,  if  I  am  your  idol,  lose  her  grandeur ; 
she  shall  not  fall  from  the  pedestal  upon  which  you 
have  placed  her.  I  have  a  horror  now  of  a  passion 
which  society  and  religion  frown  upon;  I  will  no 
longer  be  humiliated,  or  have  to  conceal  my  happi- 
ness; I  will  not  break  my  present  bonds,  I  will  con- 
tinue to  be  the  sandy,  barren  desert,  flowerless  and 
verdureless,  that  lies  before  us." 

"And  suppose  you  should  be  abandoned.?"  said 
Calyste. 

"Why,  then  I  would  go  and  sue  for  pardon,  I 
would  humble  myself  before  the  man  I  had  insulted, 


BEATRIX  297 

but  I  would  never  run  the  risk  of  plunging  into  a 
happiness  which  I  know  must  soon  end." 

"End!"  cried  Calyste. 

The  marchioness  forestalled  the  dithyrambic  out- 
burst in  which  her  lover  was  about  to  indulge  by 
repeating:  "End!"  in  a  tone  that  imposed  silence 
upon  him. 

This  contradiction  aroused  in  the  young  man's 
heart  one  of  those  mute,  internal  paroxysms  of  fury, 
which  only  they  who  have  loved  without  hope  have 
ever  known.  Beatrix  and  he  walked  on  for  some 
distance  in  absolute  silence,  no  longer  looking  at  the 
sea  or  the  cliffs  or  the  fields  of  Le  Croisic. 

"I  would  make  you  so  happy!"  said  Calyste  at 
last 

"All  men  begin  by  promising  to  make  us  happy, 
and  they  leave  us  a  legacy  of  infamy,  desertion  and 
distaste  for  the  world.  I  have  nothing  with  which 
to  reproach  the  man  to  whom  it  is  my  duty  to  be 
faithful;  he  promised  me  nothing,  I  went  to  him; 
but  the  only  possible  way  for  me  to  lessen  my  sin 
is  to  make  it  last  forever." 

"Say,  madame,  that  you  do  not  love  me!  I  love 
you  so  well  that  I  know  of  my  own  knowledge  that 
love  doesn't  discuss,  it  sees  only  itself ;  there  is  no 
sacrifice  I  would  not  make.  Give  the  word  and  I 
will  attempt  the  impossible.  The  man  who  despised 
his  mistress  because  she  threw  her  glove  among  the 
lions  and  bade  him  go  and  pick  it  up — that  man 
didn't  love !  he  did  not  realize  your  right  to  put  us 
to  the  test  in  order  to  be  sure  of  our  love,  and  not  to 


298  BEATRIX 

lay  down  your  arms  except  upon  proof  of  super- 
human grandeur.  I  would  sacrifice  my  family,  my 
name,  my  future  to  you." 

"What  an  insult  in  that  word  sacrifice!"  said  she, 
in  a  reproachful  tone  that  showed  Calyste  the  folly 
of  his  declaration. 

Only  coquettes  or  women  who  love  absolutely 
have  the  art  of  taking  an  unguarded  word  for  a 
point  of  departure,  from  which  to  soar  to  a  prodigious 
height;  wit  and  sentiment  follow  the  same  process 
at  such  times ;  but  the  loving  woman  suffers  and  the 
coquette  disdains. 

"You  are  right,"  said  Calyste,  letting  fall  a  tear, 
"that  word  can  properly  be  applied  only  to  the 
efforts  you  demand  of  me. " 

"Hush!"  said  Beatrix,  struck  by  this  reply,  in 
which  Calyste  for  the  first  time  set  forth  his  love 
with  real  eloquence;  "1  have  been  guilty  enough, 
do  not  tempt  me." 

At  that  moment,  they  were  at  the  foot  of  the  cliff  on 
which  the  box-wood  grows,  Calyste  experienced  the 
most  intoxicating  felicity  in  assisting  the  marchion- 
ess to  ascend  the  cliff,  for  she  was  determined  to  go 
to  the  very  top.  In  the  youth's  eyes,  it  was  an  un- 
speakably great  favor  to  put  his  arm  about  that  waist, 
to  feel  the  slight  trembling  of  that  form :  she  needed 
him !  The  unhoped-for  pleasure  turned  his  head, 
his  eyes  swam,  he  seized  Beatrix  around  the  waist 

"How  now!"  said  she,  with  an  imposing  air. 

"Will  you  never  be  mine?"  he  demanded,  in  a 
voice  strangled  by  a  torrent  of  blood. 


BEATRIX  299 

"Never,  my  friend,"  she  replied.  "I  can  be 
nothing  to  you  but  Beatrix,  a  dream.  Is  not  that  a 
pleasant  thought  ?  We  shall  have  no  bitterness  or 
grief  or  repentance." 

"And  you  will  return  to  Conti.?" 

"I  must." 

"Then  you  shall  never  belong  to  any  man!"  ex- 
claimed Calyste,  pushing  the  marchioness  away 
with  frantic  force. 

He  waited  to  listen  for  her  fall,  before  hurling 
himself  after  her;  but  he  heard  only  the  dull  thud 
of  a  body  falling  upon  solid  ground,  followed  by  the 
sharp  tearing  of  cloth.  Instead  of  falling  headfore- 
most into  the  sea,  Beatrix  had  turned  over  and 
landed  in  the  box  bush  in  the  cleft  of  the  rock;  but 
she  would  have  rolled  over  into  the  sea,  however, 
had  not  her  dress  caught  upon  a  projecting  point, 
and,  by  tearing  gradually  lessened  the  strain  of  her 
body  upon  the  shrub.  Mademoiselle  des  Touches, 
who  saw  the  whole  scene,  was  so  horrified  that  she 
could  not  c-y  out  but  could  only  motion  to  Gasselin 
to  run  to  the  spot.  Calyste  leaned  over  the  brink 
with  a  sort  of  ferocious  curiosity,  saw  Beatrix's 
plight  and  shuddered:  she  seemed  to  be  praying, 
she  believed  that  death  was  certain,  she  felt  that 
the  bush  was  on  the  point  of  giving  way.  With 
the  sudden  address  that  love  imparts,  with  the  su- 
pernatural agility  that  comes  to  the  young  in  the  face 
of  danger,  he  clambered  down  some  nine  feet,  by 
clinging  to  the  asperities  of  the  granite,  until  he 
reached  the  very  brink  of  the  cliff  in  time  to  take 


300  BEATRIX 

the  marchioness  in  his  arms  at  the  risk  of  falling 
into  the  sea  with  her.  When  he  raised  her,  she  was 
unconscious ;  but  he  could  fancy  that  she  was  all  his, 
there  in  that  aerial  nest,  where  they  must  remain  a 
long  while  alone,  and  his  first  feeling  was  one  of 
pleasure. 

"Open  your  eyes,  forgive  me,"  he  murmured, 
"or  we  will  die  together." 

"Die.?"  said  she,  opening  her  eyes  and  her 
pallid  lips. 

Calyste  greeted  the  word  with  a  kiss,  and  there- 
upon was  enchanted  to  feel  that  the  marchioness 
shuddered  convulsively.  At  that  moment,  Gasselin's 
hobnailed  shoes  made  themselves  heard  overhead. 
The  Breton  was  accompanied  by  Camille,  with 
whom  he  consulted  as  to  the  best  means  of  rescuing 
the  lovers. 

"There  is  only  one  way,  mademoiselle,"  said 
Gasselin:  "I  will  climb  down  there,  then  they  can 
stand  on  my  shoulders  and  you  can  give  them  a 
hand." 

"And  you.?"  said  Camille. 

The  servant  seemed  surprised  that  he  should  be 
considered  of  any  consequence  when  his  young 
master  was  in  danger. 

"The  better  way  is  to  go  to  Le  Croisic  for  a  lad- 
der," said  Camille. 

"She's  a  mischief-maker  all  the  same,"  said 
Gasselin  to  himself,  as  he  turned  away. 

Beatrix,  in  a  feeble  voice,  asked  to  be  laid  on  the 
ground;  she  felt  as  if  she  were  fainting,  Calyste 


BEATRIX  301 

placed  her  on  the  cool  mould  between  the  stone  and 
the  box-bush. 

"I  saw  you,  Calyste,"  said  Camille.  "Whether 
Beatrix  die  or  be  saved,  it  must  never  be  anything 
but  an  accident." 

"She  will  hate  me,"  said  he, with  streaming  eyes. 

"She  will  adore  you,"  said  Camille.  "This  is 
the  end  of  our  excursion  and  we  must  take  her  back 
to  Les  Touches.  What  would  have  become  of  you, 
pray,  if  she  had  died.?" 

"I  would  have  followed  her." 

"And  what  of  your  mother?" 

Then,  after  a  pause : 

"And  what  of  me?"  she  said  softly. 

Calyste  stood  with  his  back  against  the  rock, 
pale  and  mute.  Gasselin  soon  came  running  back 
from  one  of  the  small  farmhouses  scattered  through 
the  fields,  with  a  ladder  that  he  had  found  there. 
Beatrix  had  recovered  her  strength  to  some  extent 
When  Gasselin  had  planted  the  ladder,  the  mar- 
chioness, assisted  by  the  old  servant, — who  sug- 
gested to  Calyste  to  pass  Camille's  red  shawl  under 
her  arms  and  hand  the  ends  to  him, — succeeded  in 
reaching  the  rounded  summit  of  the  headland, 
where  Gasselin  took  her  in  his  arms  as  he  would 
a  child,  and  carried  her  down  to  the  shore. 

"I  wouldn't  have  feared  death,  but  the  agony  of 
it!"  she  said,  in  a  weak  voice,  to  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches. 

The  weakness  and  prostration  that  Beatrix  dis- 
played, compelled  Camille  to  have  her  taken  to  the 


302  BEATRIX 

farm  where  Gasselin  borrowed  the  ladder.  Calyste, 
Gasselin  and  Camille  removed  such  of  their  clothes 
as  they  could  spare,  made  a  mattress  on  the  ladder, 
placed  Beatrix  upon  it  and  carried  her  as  if  upon  a 
litter.  The  farmer  and  his  wife  offered  their  bed. 
Gasselin  ran  to  the  place  where  the  horses  were 
waiting,  took  one  of  them  and  rode  off  to  Le  Croisic 
for  the  doctor,  after  ordering  the  boatmen  to  come 
to  the  inlet  nearest  the  farm. 

Calyste,  seated  on  a  stool,  answered  with  nods 
and  occasional  monosyllables,  the  questions  put  to 
him  by  Camille,  who  was  no  less  disturbed  by  his 
condition  than  by  Beatrix's.  After  she  was  bled, 
the  patient  felt  decidedly  better ;  she  was  able  to 
speak,  consented  to  go  aboard  the  boat,  and,  about 
five  in  the  afternoon,  was  carried  from  the  jetty  at 
Guerande  to  Les  Touches,  where  the  physician  from 
the  town  was  waiting.  The  news  of  the  mishap 
had  spread  through  that  desolate,  almost  uninhabited 
region  with  inexplicable  rapidity. 

Calyste  passed  the  night  at  Les  Touches,  sitting 
with  Camille  beside  Beatrix's  bed.  The  doctor  had 
given  his  word  that  the  marchioness  would  feel 
nothing  more  than  a  slight  lameness  on  the  morrow. 
Through  Calyste's  despair  could  be  detected  gleams 
of  profound  joy ;  he  was  beside  his  loved  one's  bed, 
his  eyes  were  upon  her,  sleeping  or  waking;  he 
could  study  her  pale  face  and  her  slightest  move- 
ment Camille  smiled  bitterly  as  she  recognized 
in  his  demeanor  the  symptoms  of  one  of  those  pas- 
sions which  leave  indelible  traces  upon  a  man's 


BEATRIX  303 

heart  and  faculties,  by  entwining  themselves  with 
his  life,  at  a  time  when  there  is  no  thought,  no  out- 
side care  to  oppose  this  cruel  internal  travail. 

Calyste  would  never  see  the  real  woman  that 
lived  in  Beatrix.  How  ingenuously  the  youthful 
Breton  allowed  his  most  secret  thoughts  to  be  read 
upon  his  face ! — he  fancied  that  that  woman  belonged 
to  him  because  he  was  sitting  in  her  bedroom  and  ad- 
miring her  in  the  neglige  attire  of  the  bed.  He 
watched,  with  ecstatic  attention,  her  slightest  move- 
ments; his  face  denoted  such  fascinating  curiosity, 
his  joy  made  itself  manifest  so  artlessly,  that  there 
came  a  moment  when  the  two  women  glanced  at 
each  other  with  a  smile.  When  Calyste  saw  the 
invalid's  sea-green  eyes  lighted  up  with  an  expres- 
sion of  love  and  raillery  and  confusion  commingled, 
he  blushed  and  turned  his  head  away. 

"Didn't  I  tell  you,  Calyste,  that  you  men  promise 
us  happiness,  and  end  by  throwing  us  over  a  preci- 
pice?" 

At  this  jocose  remark,  uttered  in  a  most  seductive 
tone  and  denoting  some  change  in  Beatrix's  heart, 
Calyste  threw  himself  on  his  knees,  took  one  of  the 
moist  hands  which  she  surrendered  to  him,  and 
kissed  it  most  humbly. 

"You  have  the  right  to  reject  my  love  forever, 
and  I  have  no  right  to  say  a  single  word  to  you 
hereafter." 

"Ah!"  cried  Camille,  when  she  saw  the  expres- 
sion upon  Beatrix's  face,  and  compared  it  to  the  one 
her  diplomatic  efforts  had  succeeded  in  depicting 


304  BEATRIX 

thereon,  "love  will  always  have  more  wit  of  his 
own  than  all  the  rest  of  the  world!  Take  your 
draught,  my  dear,  and  go  to  sleep." 

That  night  passed  by  Calyste  with  Mademoiselle 
des  Touches,  who  read  works  upon  mystic  theology 
while  Calyste  was  reading  Indiana,  the  first  work 
of  Camille's  illustrious  rival,  in  which  is  presented 
the  captivating  figure  of  a  young  man  who  loves 
with  idolatrous  devotion,  with  mysterious  tranquil- 
lity and  throughout  his  whole  life,  a  woman  in  the 
same  false  position  that  Beatrix  occupied — a  book 
which  set  before  him  a  fatal  example ! — that  night 
left  ineffaceable  marks  in  the  poor  boy's  heart,  for 
Felicite  made  him  understand  that  no  woman,  unless 
she  were  a  perfect  monster,  could  fail  to  be  happy 
and  flattered  in  every  ramification  of  her  vanity  by 
having  been  the  object  of  a  crime. 

"You  wouldn't  have  pushed  me  into  the  water!" 
said  poor  Camille,  wiping  away  a  tear. 

Toward  morning,  Calyste,  utterly  exhausted,  fell 
asleep  in  his  chair.  It  was  then  the  marchioness's 
turn  to  gaze  upon  the  lovely  child,  whose  cheeks 
were  paled  by  his  emotions  and  by  his  first  love 
vigil;  she  heard  him  murmuring  her  name  in  his 
sleep. 

"He  loves  me  even  when  he's  asleep,"  she  said 
to  Camille. 

"We  must  send  him  home  to  bed,"  said  Camille, 
awakening  him. 

There  was  no  anxiety  in  the  Du  Guenic  house- 
hold, for  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  had  written  a 


BEATRIX  305 

line  to  the  baroness.  Calyste  returned  to  Les 
Touches  to  dinner;  he  found  Beatrix  dressed,  but 
pale  and  weak  and  languid;  there  was  not  the  least 
trace  of  severity  in  her  words  or  her  looks,  however. 
After  that  evening,  which  Camille  passed  at  the 
piano  in  order  to  allow  Calyste  to  hold  and  press 
Beatrix's  hands,  neither  of  them  being  able  to 
speak,  there  was  not  the  slightest  cloud  upon  the 
horizon  at  Les  Touches.  Felicite  effaced  herself 
completely.  Cold,  frail,  slender,  hard  women,  like 
Madame  de  Rochefide,  women  whose  necks  form  a 
bony  link  between  the  head  and  body,  making  them 
vaguely  resemble  the  feline  species,  have  hearts  of 
the  same  pale  shade  as  their  light  gray  or  green 
eyes;  and  to  melt,  to  liquefy  those  stony  organs, 
nothing  less  than  a  stroke  of  lightning  will  suffice. 
In  Madame  de  Rochefide's  case,  the  frenzy  of  love 
and  Calyste's  assault  upon  her  were  the  stroke  of 
lightning  which  nothing  can  resist,  and  which  sub- 
dues the  most  rebellious  natures.  Beatrix  felt 
humbled  within;  pure,  true  love  bathed  her  heart 
in  its  soft  and  soothing  waves.  She  lived  in  a 
warm,  delightful  atmosphere  of  unfamiliar  senti- 
ments, wherein  she  seemed  to  be  made  greater,  ex- 
alted ;  she  entered  the  lofty  realms  wherein  Bretagne 
has,  from  all  time,  enthroned  woman.  She  relished 
the  respectful  adoration  of  this  youth  whose  joy  cost 
her  so  little,  for  a  gesture,  a  glance,  a  word  satisfied 
Calyste.  The  high  price  paid  by  the  heart  for 
these  trifles  touched  her  deeply.  The  glove  upon 
which  that  angel   was  allowed  to   breathe   might 


306  BEATRIX 

become  more  to  him  than  her  whole  person  was  to 
the  man  by  whom  she  should  have  been  adored. 
What  a  contrast !  What  woman  could  have  resisted 
such  constant  deification  ?  She  was  sure  of  being 
obeyed  and  understood.  If  she  had  told  Calyste  to 
risk  his  life  to  gratify  her  lightest  whim,  he  would 
not  even  have  reflected.  And  so  Beatrix  became 
immeasurably  noble  and  imposing;  she  looked  at 
love  on  the  side  of  its  grandeur,  she  sought  in  it  a 
support  to  enable  her  to  remain  the  most  magnificent 
of  all  women  in  the  eyes  of  Calyste,  over  whom  she 
was  determined  to  acquire  a  dominion  that  should 
know  no  end.  Her  coquetries  were  the  more  per- 
sistent because  she  felt  that  she  was  weaker  than  of 
old.  She  played  the  invalid  for  a  whole  week  with 
fascinating  hypocrisy.  How  many  times  did  she 
make  the  circuit  of  the  carpet  of  verdure  that 
stretched  from  the  facade  of  Les  Touches  to  the  gar- 
den, leaning  upon  Calyste's  arm  and  thus  paying 
back  to  Camille  the  torture  she  had  inflicted  upon 
her  during  the  first  week  of  her  stay. 

"Ah!  my  dear,  you  are  forcing  him  to  make  a 
long  journey,"  said  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  to 
the  marchioness. 

One  evening,  before  the  excursion  to  Le  Croisic, 
the  two  women  were  talking  about  love  and  laughing 
over  the  different  methods  men  adopt  of  declaring 
themselves,  admitting  to  each  other  that  the  most 
adroit,  and  naturally  the  least  loving,  did  not  amuse 
themselves  wandering  back  and  forth  in  the  laby- 
rinths of  sentimentality,  and  that  they  were  quite 


BEATRIX  307 

right ;  so  that  the  men  who  love  the  best  were,  for 
a  time,  treated  with  less  respect  by  them. 

"They  act  like  La  Fontaine  on  his  way  to  the 
Academy!"  Camille  had  said. 

Her  last  remark,  by  reproaching  the  marchioness 
for  her  machiavellianism,  reminded  her  of  that  con- 
versation. Madame  de  Rochefide  had  an  absolutely 
effectual  method  of  keeping  Calyste  within  the 
limits  to  which  she  chose  to  confine  him:  with  a 
gesture  or  a  glance,  she  would  remind  him  of  his 
shocking  violence  on  the  edge  of  the  cliff.  There- 
upon the  poor  martyr's  eyes  would  fill  with  tears, 
he  would  hold  his  peace  and  swallow  his  arguments, 
his  vows,  his  sufferings  with  a  heroism  which  would 
most  assuredly  have  touched  any  other  woman. 
She  drove  him  by  her  infernal  coquetry  to  such 
utter  desperation,  that  he  threw  himself  one  day  in 
Camille's  arms,  beseeching  her  to  advise  him. 

Beatrix,  armed  with  the  passage  from  Calyste's 
letter  in  which  he  said  that  to  love  was  the  greatest 
of  joys,  and  that  to  be  loved  came  after,  made  use 
of  that  axiom  to  restrict  his  passion  to  the  respectful 
idolatry  which  suited  her  views.  She  was  so  fond 
of  allowing  her  heart  to  be  flattered  by  the  sweet 
concerts  of  praise  and  adoration  which  nature  sug- 
gests to  young  men ;  there  is  so  much  unstudied  art, 
so  much  artless  fascination  in  their  outcries,  in 
their  entreaties,  in  their  exclamations,  in  their  ap- 
peals to  themselves,  in  the  mortgages  they  offer 
upon  the  future,  that  Beatrix  was  too  crafty  to  re- 
ply.    She  had  said  that  she  doubted!   it  was  not 


308  BEATRIX 

yet  a  question  of  happiness,  but  of  permission  to 
love,  which  the  child  was  always  entreating  for, 
persisting  in  his  determination  to  carry  the  citadel 
on  the  strongest  side,  the  moral  side. 

The  woman  who  is  strongest  in  speech  is  often 
very  weak  in  action.  After  observing  the  progress 
he  had  made  by  pushing  Beatrix  into  the  sea,  it  is 
strange  that  Calyste  did  not  continue  to  seek  happi- 
ness by  violent  measures ;  but  love  in  young  men 
is  such  an  ecstatic  and  religious  sentiment,  that  it 
seeks  to  obtain  everything  by  moral  conviction: 
and  thence  it  derives  its  sublimity. 

Nevertheless,  one  day,  the  young  Breton,  driven 
to  extremity  by  his  longing,  complained  bitterly  to 
Camille  of  Beatrix's  conduct. 

"I  intended  to  cure  you  by  showing  you  at  once 
what  she  is,"  rejoined  Mademoiselle  des  Touches, 
"but  you  spoiled  everything  by  your  impatience. 
Ten  days  ago  you  were  her  master ;  to-day  you  are 
her  slave,  my  poor  boy.  It  is  plain,  therefore,  that 
you  will  never  have  the  strength  to  carry  out  my 
orders." 

"What  must  I  do?" 

"Pick  a  quarrel  with  her  on  the  ground  of  her 
harsh  treatment.  A  woman  is  always  angered  by 
hard  words;  irritate  her  till  she  abuses  you,  and 
don't  return  to  Les  Touches  until  she  sends  for 
you." 

There  is  a  time,  in  all  violent  sicknesses,  when 
the  patient  will  take  the  most  severe  remedies  and 
undergo  the  most  horrible  operations.     Calyste  had 


BEATRIX  309 

reached  that  stage.  He  followed  Camiile's  advice 
and  remained  at  home  two  days;  but  on  the  third 
day,  he  knocked  at  Beatrix's  door  and  told  her  that 
Camille  and  himself  were  awaiting  her  at  the 
breakfast  table. 

"Still  another  opportunity  thrown  away!"  said 
Camille,  when  she  saw  him  return  in  such  cowardly 
fashion. 

During  those  two  days,  Beatrix  had  paused  many 
times  at  the  window  overlooking  the  Guerande 
road.  When  Camille  surprised  her  there,  she  said 
that  she  was  admiring  the  effect  produced  by  the 
thorn-broom  along  the  road,  where  its  golden  blos- 
soms glistened  in  the  September  sun.  Thus,  Camille 
detected  Beatrix's  secret,  and  had  but  to  say  a  sin- 
gle word  to  make  Calyste  happy,  but  she  did  not 
say  it:  she  still  had  too  much  of  the  woman  about 
her  to  urge  him  on  to  the  act  at  which  young  hearts 
take  fright,  seeming  to  realize  all  that  their  ideal  is 
destined  to  lose  thereby. 

Beatrix  kept  Camille  and  Calyste  waiting  for  a 
long  while.  To  any  other  than  Calyste,  the  delay 
would  have  been  significant,  for  the  marchioness's 
toilet  betrayed  a  desire  to  fascinate  him  and  prevent 
any  repetition  of  his  absence.  After  breakfast,  she 
went  into  the  garden,  and  enchanted  with  delight 
the  child  she  had  long  enchanted  with  love  by  ex- 
pressing a  desire  to  see  once  more  the  cliff  where 
she  had  been  so  near  death. 

"Let  us  go  alone,"  said  Calyste,  in  a  troubled 
voice. 


310  BEATRIX 

"If  I  refused,"  she  replied,  "I  should  give  you 
reason  to  think  that  you  are  dangerous.  Alas ! — as 
I  have  told  you  a  thousand  times,  I  belong  to 
another  and  can  never  belong  to  any  but  him ;  1 
made  my  choice  without  knowing  anything  of  love. 
The  fault  was  twofold,  and  twofold  the  punish- 
ment " 

When  she  spoke  in  this  strain,  her  eyes  half  wet 
with  the  rare  tears  such  women  shed,  Calyste  had 
a  feeling  of  compassion  that  allayed  his  ardent 
frenzy;  he  adored  her  then  like  a  Madonna.  We 
can  no  more  expect  different  natures  to  resemble  one 
another  in  the  expression  of  their  sentiments  than 
we  can  expect  trees  of  different  kinds  to  bear  the 
same  fruits.  Beatrix  was  violently  agitated  at  that 
moment;  she  was  wavering  between  herself  and 
Calyste,  between  society  to  which  she  hoped  some 
day  to  return,  and  unalloyed  happiness;  between 
ruining  herself  forever  by  a  second  unpardonable 
passion,  and  the  pardon  of  society.  She  was  begin- 
ning to  listen,  without  even  a  pretence  of  anger, 
to  the  protestations  of  blind  love;  she  allowed  her- 
self to  be  caressed  by  the  gentle  hands  of  Pity. 
Several  times  already,  she  had  been  moved  to  tears 
as  she  listened  to  Calyste  promising  to  make  up  to 
her  with  his  love  for  all  that  she  would  lose  in  the 
eyes  of  the  world,  and  sympathizing  with  her  be- 
cause she  was  bound  to  an  evil  genius,  a  false- 
hearted wretch  like  Conti.  More  than  once  she 
had  failed  to  close  Calyste's  mouth  when  she  was 
telling  him  of  the  misery  and  suffering  that  had 


BEATRIX  311 

overwhelmed  her  in  Italy  when  she  found  that  she 
was  not  alone  in  Conti's  heart  Camille  had  given 
Calyste  more  than  one  lesson  on  that  subject, 
Calyste  profited  by  them. 

"1  will  love  you  absolutely,"  he  would  say ;  "you 
will  not  enjoy  artistic  triumphs  with  me,  nor  the 
pleasurable  emotion  caused  by  a  vast  audience 
swayed  by  marvelous  talent;  my  only  talent  will 
be  to  love  you,  my  only  joys  will  be  yours;  no 
woman's  admiration  will  seem  to  me  to  deserve  a 
recompense;  you  will  have  no  hateful  rivalry  to 
fear ;  you  are  not  appreciated,  but  where  you  are 
received,  I  would  like  to  be  received,  too,  every 
day." 

She  listened  with  lowered  head,  letting  him  kiss 
her  hands,  confessing  silently,  but  with  good  grace, 
that  perhaps  she  was  an  unappreciated  angel. 

"I  have  been  too  deeply  humiliated,"  she  replied; 
"my  past  deprives  my  future  of  all  security." 


That  was  a  day  of  days  to  Calyste,  when,  upon 
approaching  Les  Touches  at  seven  in  the  morning, 
he  caught  a  glimpse,  between  two  clumps  of  thorn- 
broom,  of  Beatrix  standing  at  a  window,  with  the 
same  straw  hat  upon  her  head  that  she  had  worn  on 
the  day  of  their  excursion.  A  mist  passed  before 
his  eyes.  Such  trifling  details  of  passion  make  the 
world  greater.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  but  French 
women  possess  the  secret  of  these  coups  de  th'eatre ; 
they  owe  them  to  their  quick  wit,  and  they  have 
the  art  of  introducing  as  many  such  effects  in  a 
sentiment  as  it  will  bear  without  losing  its  force. 

Ah!  how  lightly  her  hand  rested  upon  Calyste's 
arm.  They  went  out  together  through  the  garden 
gate  opening  on  the  dunes.  Beatrix  thought  the 
sand  delightful ;  she  spied  some  of  the  hardy  little 
plants  with  pink  flowers  that  grow  there,  and 
plucked  several  of  them  which  she  put  with  some 
Carthusian  pinks — also  indigenous  in  those  barren 
sands — and  divided  the  whole  in  a  significant  fash- 
ion with  Calyste,  to  whom  those  flowers  and  that 
foliage  were  destined  to  be  an  everlasting,  sinister 
memory. 

"We  will  put  some  box  with  it,"  she  said  with  a 
smile. 

They  waited  some  time  for  the  boat  on  the  jetty, 

(313) 


314  BEATRIX 

where  Calyste  told  her  of  his  childish  performance 
on  the  day  of  her  arrival. 

"That  escapade  of  yours,  which  I  knew  all  about, 
was  the  cause  of  my  severity  the  first  day,"  said 
she. 

During  this  jaunt,  Madame  de  Rochefide  adopted 
the  slightly  jocose  tone  of  the  woman  who  loves,  as 
she  adopted  her  affectionate  manner  and  abandon. 
Calyste  might  well  believe  that  she  loved  him. 
But  when,  as  they  walked  along  the  sand  at  the 
foot  of  the  cliffs,  they  went  down  into  one  of  the 
little  coves  whither  the  waves  have  brought  most 
wonderful  mosaics  composed  of  strange  kinds  of 
marble,  and  played  together  there  like  children, 
seeking  the  finest  specimens — when  Calyste,  in  the 
most  intense  excitement,  explicitly  proposed  to  her 
to  fly  to  Ireland  with  him,  she  assumed  a  dignified, 
mysterious  manner  and  asked  him  for  his  arm,  and 
they  went  on  toward  the  cliff,  which  she  had  named 
her  Tarpeian  Rock. 

"My  friend,"  said  she  as  they  slowly  climbed  to 
the  top  of  that  magnificent  block  of  granite,  which 
she  might  have  taken  for  a  pedestal,  "1  have  not 
the  courage  to  conceal  from  you  how  much  you  are 
to  me.  In  the  last  ten  years,  I  have  had  no  pleasure 
comparable  to  that  we  have  just  enjoyed,  hunting  for 
shells  among  those  rocks  on  the  shore,  exchanging 
pebbles  with  which  I  will  make  a  necklace  that  will 
be  more  precious  to  me  than  if  it  were  composed  of 
the  most  superb  diamonds.  Just  now  I  was  a  child, 
a  little  girl,  what  I  was  at  fourteen  or  fifteen,  and 


BEATRIX  315 

then  I  was  worthy  of  you.  The  love  I  have  been 
fortunate  enough  to  inspire  in  you  has  exalted  me 
in  my  own  eyes.  Listen  to  these  words  with  all 
their  secret  meaning.  You  have  made  me  the  proud- 
est and  happiest  woman  of  my  sex,  and  it  is  probable 
that  you  will  live  longer  in  my  memory  than  I  in 
yours." 

At  that  moment,  they  had  reached  the  highest 
point  of  the  cliff,  from  which  they  could  see  on  one 
side,  the  ocean,  on  the  other,  Bretagne  with  its  golden 
islands,  its  feudal  towers  and  its  clumps  of  thorn- 
broom.  Never  did  woman  stand  upon  a  grander 
stage  to  make  so  momentous  a  confession. 

"But,"  said  she,  "I  do  not  belong  to  myself,  1 
am  more  firmly  bound  by  my  own  volition  than  I 
was  by  the  law.  Suffer  the  penalty  of  my  wrong- 
doing therefore,  and  be  content  to  know  that  we 
suffer  together.  Dante  never  saw  Beatrice  again, 
Petrarch  never  possessed  his  Laura.  Such  disasters 
happen  only  to  great  hearts.  Ah !  if  I  am  deserted, 
if  1  fall  a  hundred  degrees  lower  in  shame  and  in- 
famy, if  your  Beatrix  is  cruelly  misunderstood  by 
the  world  which  will  be  terribly  hard  upon  her,  if 
she  is  the  lowest  of  women! — then,  my  adored 
child,"  she  continued,  taking  his  hand,  "you  will 
know  that  she  is  the  first  of  women,  that  she  can 
rise  to  the  skies,  leaning  upon  you ;  but  when  that 
time  comes,  my  dear,"  said  she,  with  a  sublime 
glance,  "if  you  prefer  to  push  her  into  the  sea,  do 
not  miss  your  aim:  after  your  love,  death!" 

Calyste  had  his  arm  about  her  waist,  he  pressed 


3l6  BEATRIX 

her  to  his  heart  To  confirm  the  words  that  fell  so 
sweetly  on  his  ears,  Madame  de  Rochefide  deposited 
upon  his  brow  the  most  chaste  and  most  modest  of 
all  kisses.  Then  they  went  down  together  and 
wended  their  way  slowly  homeward,  talking  like 
people  who  have  a  perfect  understanding;  she  be- 
lieving that  she  had  secured  peace,  he,  with  no  fur- 
ther doubt  of  his  good  fortune,  and  both  equally 
deceived. 

Calyste,  judging  from  what  Cam i lie  had  told  him, 
hoped  that  Conti  would  be  overjoyed  to  have  this 
excuse  for  leaving  Beatrix.  The  marchioness,  for 
her  part,  abandoned  herself  to  the  uncertainties  of 
her  position,  awaiting  what  chance  might  bring  to 
pass.  Calyste  was  too  ingenuous,  too  deeply  in 
love  to  invent  the  chance. 

They  arrived  at  Les  Touches  and  entered  the 
garden  gate,  both  in  a  most  delicious  frame  of  mind. 
Calyste  had  taken  the  key.  It  was  about  six  in  the 
afternoon.  The  intoxicating  perfumes,  the  mild 
atmosphere,  the  yellowish  rays  of  the  setting  sun, 
all  were  in  accord  with  their  melting  humor  and 
their  sentimental  conversation.  Their  steps  were 
as  measured  and  harmonious  as  those  of  lovers; 
their  movements  betrayed  a  perfect  union  of 
thought 

The  silence  at  Les  Touches  was  so  profound  that 
the  sound  of  the  gate  opening  and  closing  could  be 
heard  throughout  the  garden.  As  Calyste  and 
Beatrix  had  said  all  that  they  had  to  say,  and  as 
their  agitated  excursion  had  wearied  them,  they 


BEATRIX  317 

walked  softly  along  without  speaking.  Suddenly,  at 
a  bend  in  the  path,  Beatrix  had  a  most  horrible  sen- 
sation, the  contagious  horror  caused  by  the  sight  of 
a  reptile,  which  made  Calyste's  blood  run  cold  be- 
fore he  saw  the  cause  of  it.  Sitting  on  a  bench  be- 
neath an  ash  with  overhanging  branches,  and 
talking  with  Camille  Maupin,  was  Conti! 

The  convulsive,  inward  trembling  of  the  mar- 
chioness was  more  evident  than  she  knew;  it 
showed  Calyste  how  dear  he  had  become  to  this 
woman  who  had  just  erected  a  barrier  between  her- 
self and  him,  for  the  purpose,  doubtless,  of  securing 
a  few  more  days  of  coquetry  before  passing  it  In 
a  twinkling,  a  whole  tragic  drama  was  enacted  in 
the  depths  of  those  hearts. 

**I  fancy  you  did  not  expect  me  so  soon,"  said  the 
artist  to  Beatrix,  offering  her  his  arm. 

The  marchioness  could  not  refrain  from  dropping 
Calyste's  arm  and  taking  Conti's.  This  ignoble 
transition,  imperiously  commanded,  which  seemed 
to  cast  dishonor  upon  his  new  passion,  overwhelmed 
Calyste,  who  went  and  threw  himself  upon  the 
bench  by  Camille's  side  after  exchanging  the  coldest 
of  salutations  with  his  rival.  He  experienced  a 
multitude  of  opposing  sensations :  when  he  learned 
how  Beatrix  loved  him,  he  felt  a  violent  impulse  to 
rush  upon  the  artist,  saying  that  Beatrix  belonged 
to  him ;  but  the  poor  woman's  inward  convulsion, 
betraying  all  that  she  was  suffering — for  she  had 
paid  therein  the  price  of  all  her  sinning  in  a  single 
moment— moved  him  so  deeply,  that  he  was  fairly 


3l8  BEATRIX 

stupefied,  weighed  down  like  herself  by  implacable 
necessity.  These  two  contrary  impulses  produced 
within  him  the  most  violent  of  all  the  tempests 
which  he  had  been  compelled  to  face  since  he  had 
loved  Beatrix. 

Madame  de  Rochefide  and  Conti  passed  in  front 
of  the  bench  on  which  Calyste  was  half  lying  be- 
side Camille;  the  marchioness  bestowed  upon  her 
rival  one  of  the  eloquent  glances  by  which  women 
can  say  whatever  they  wish  to  say,  but  she  avoided 
Calyste's  eyes  and  seemed  to  be  listening  to  Conti, 
who  was  apparently  indulging  in  banter. 

"What  can  they  be  saying?"  Calyste  asked  Ca- 
mille. 

"My  dear  child,  you  do  not  yet  understand  the 
terrible  power  over  a  woman  that  extinct  love  gives 
to  a  man !  Beatrix  could  not  refuse  to  give  him  her 
hand;  he  is  joking  her  probably  about  her  love 
affairs,  for  he  must  have  guessed  how  the  land  lay 
from  your  attitude  and  the  way  in  which  you  first 
appeared  before  him." 

"Joking  her,  do  you  say?"  said  the  impetuous 
youth. 

"Calm  yourself,"  said  Camille,  "or  you  will  lose 
what  remaining  chances  you  have.  If  he  rubs 
Beatrix's  self-esteem  a  little  too  roughly,  she  will 
trample  him  under  her  feet  like  a  worm.  But  he's 
an  astute  creature,  and  he  will  know  how  to  act 
understandingly.  He  will  not  imagine  that  the 
proud  Madame  de  Rochefide  can  have  been  false  to 
him.     There  would  be  too  much  depravity  in  loving 


BEATRIX  319 

a  man  just  because  of  his  beauty !  He  will  probably 
describe  you  to  her  as  a  child  whose  vanity  is 
aroused  by  the  thought  of  winning  a  marchioness, 
and  of  making  himself  the  arbiter  of  the  destinies 
of  two  women.  In  short,  he  will  discharge  the  whole 
entertaining  artillery  of  the  most  insulting  conjec- 
tures. Beatrix  will  then  be  compelled  to  resort  to 
false  denials  which  he  will  take  advantage  of  to  re- 
tain his  mastery. 

"Ah!"  said  Calyste,  "he  doesn't  love  her.  If  I 
were  in  his  place,  I  would  leave  her  free:  love 
means  freedom  of  selection  at  any  moment,  con- 
firmed from  day  to  day.  The  morrow  sets  the  seal 
of  approval  on  the  day  before  and  increases  the 
fund  of  our  pleasures.  A  few  days  later  and  he 
wouldn't  have  found  us.  What  brought  him  back, 
then?" 

"A  journalistic  joke,"  said  Camille.  "The 
opera,  upon  the  success  of  which  he  relied,  has  fallen 
flat  The  remark:  'It's  hard  to  lose  one's 
reputation  and  one's  mistress  at  the  same  time!' 
made  in  the  green  room,  by  Claude  Vignon  perhaps, 
must  have  touched  his  vanity  to  the  quick.  Love 
based  on  petty  sentiments  is  pitiless.  I  questioned 
him,  but  who  can  understand  a  nature  so  false  and 
deceitful  ?  He  seems  tired  of  his  poverty  and  his 
love,  disgusted  with  life.  He  regrets  having  formed 
so  public  a  connection  with  the  marchioness,  and, 
in  speaking  of  his  former  happiness,  he  delivered  a 
poem  of  melancholy  a  little  too  clever  to  be  true. 
He  hoped,   I  have  no  doubt,  to  surprise  me  into 


320  BEATRIX 

betraying  the  secret  of  your  love,  in  the  midst  of 
the  joy  his  flattery  would  cause  me." 

"Well?"  said  Calyste,  watching  Beatrix  and 
Conti  as  they  drew  near,  and  wholly  oblivious  to 
what  she  was  saying. 

Camille,  as  a  measure  of  prudence,  had  kept  on 
the  defensive,  and  had  betrayed  neither  Calyste's 
secret  nor  Beatrix's.  The  artist  was  quite  capable 
of  hoodwinking  everybody,  and  Camille  urged 
Calyste  to  be  on  his  guard  against  him. 

"My  dear  child,"  said  she,  "this  is  the  most  crit- 
ical moment  for  you ;  you  need  to  exhibit  a  degree 
of  prudence  and  adroitness  which  you  do  not  possess, 
and  you  will  allow  yourself  to  be  fooled  by  the 
craftiest  man  in  the  world,  for  I  can  do  nothing  for 
you  now." 

The  clock  announced  the  dinner  hour.  Conti 
offered  his  arm  to  Camille  and  Beatrix  took 
Calyste's.  Camille  allowed  the  marchioness  to  go 
first  to  the  house,  and  she  had  an  opportunity  to 
look  at  Calyste  and  enjoin  discretion  upon  him  by 
putting  her  finger  to  her  lips. 

Conti  was  excessively  gay  during  dinner.  Per- 
haps it  was  his  method  of  testing  Madame  de 
Rochefide,  who  played  her  part  very  badly.  As  a 
coquette  simply,  she  might  have  deceived  Conti; 
but,  being  in  love,  her  secret  was  betrayed.  The 
crafty  musician,  far  from  taking  advantage  of  her 
embarrassment,  did  not  seem  to  notice  it  He  led 
the  conversation  at  dessert  to  the  subject  of  women, 
and  lauded  the  nobility  of  their  sentiments. 


BEATRIX  321 

"A  woman  who  is  on  the  point  of  abandoning  us 
in  our  prosperity,  sacrifices  everything  for  us  in 
adversity,"  he  said.  "Women  have,  over  men,  the 
advantage  of  constancy ;  they  must  have  been  very 
deeply  wounded  to  induce  them  to  leave  a  first 
lover;  they  cling  to  him  as  to  their  honor;  a 
second  passion  is  degrading,"  etc.,  etc. 

His  moral  reflections  were  unexceptionable,  he 
burned  incense  at  the  altar  upon  which  a  heart 
was  bleeding,  pierced  by  a  thousand  thrusts.  Ca- 
mille  and  Beatrix  alone  understood  the  bitter 
mockery  of  the  poisoned  epigrams  which  he  dis- 
charged between  eulogies.  From  time  to  time 
both  of  them  blushed,  but  they  were  compelled  to 
contain  themselves;  they  went  upstairs  to  Ca- 
mille's  apartments  arm-in-arm,  passing,  by  a  com- 
mon impulse,  through  the  large  salon,  where  there 
was  no  light  and  they  could  be  alone  for  a 
moment. 

"It  is  impossible  for  me  to  allow  Conti  to  walk 
over  my  body,  or  to  triumph  over  me,"  said  Beatrix 
in  a  low  voice.  "The  galley-slave  is  always  under 
the  domination  of  the  comrade  to  whom  he  is 
chained.  I  am  lost;  I  must  return  to  the  galleys  of 
love.  And  you  have  forced  me  to  it!  Ah!  you 
sent  for  him  a  day  too  late  or  a  day  too  soon !  I 
recognize  your  infernal  talent  as  an  author  in  this 
move;  the  vengeance  is  complete  and  the  catas- 
trophe perfect!" 

"I  may  have  said  that  I  would  write  to  Conti, 
but  as  to  doing  it — I  am  incapable  of  such  a  thing!" 


322  BEATRIX 

cried  Camille.  "You  are  suffering,  so  I  forgive 
you." 

"What  will  become  of  Calyste"?said  the  mar- 
chioness, with  admirably  artless  self-conceit. 

"Then  Conti  is  to  take  you  away  with  him,  is 
he?"  queried  Camille. 

"Ah!  you  anticipate  a  triumph?"  cried  Beatrix. 

The  marchioness  hurled  these  words  at  Camille 
in  a  frenzy  of  rage  and  with  her  lovely  features  all 
distorted,  while  Camille  tried  to  conceal  her  delight 
beneath  a  false  expression  of  sadness;  but  the  bril- 
liancy of  her  eyes  gave  the  lie  to  the  contraction 
of  her  mask,  and  Beatrix  was  a  connoisseur  in 
grimaces !  And  so,  when  they  looked  at  each  other 
in  the  light,  sitting  on  the  same  divan  on  which  so 
many  comedies  had  been  enacted  in  the  last  three 
weeks,  and  where  the  secret  tragedy  of  so  many 
thwarted  passions  was  beginning,  the  two  women 
took  each  other's  measure  for  the  last  time:  they 
realized  then  that  they  were  separated  by  bitter 
hate. 

"Calyste  will  remain  with  you,"  said  Beatrix, 
looking  into  her  friend's  eyes;  "but  I  am  firmly  es- 
tablished in  his  heart  and  no  woman  can  ever  drive 
me  from  it" 

Camille  retorted,  in  an  indescribably  ironical 
tone,  which  cut  the  marchioness  to  the  heart,  with 
the  famous  words  of  Mazarin's  niece  to  Louis  XIV. : 
**Tu  rlgnes,  tu  I'aimes,  et  tiipars  /" — You  reign,  you 
love  and  you  depart. — 

Neither  of  the  two,  during  this  very  animated 


BEATRIX  323 

scene,  had  noticed  the  absence  of  Calyste  and 
Conti.  The  artist  had  remained  at  table  with  his 
rival,  bidding  him  bear  him  company  and  finish  a 
bottle  of  champagne. 

"We  have  something  to  say  to  each  other,"  said 
Conti  to  forestall  any  possible  refusal  on  Calyste's 
part 

In  their  respective  positions,  the  young  Breton 
was  compelled  to  obey  this  command. 

"My  dear  fellow,"  said  the  musician  in  a  wheed- 
ling voice,  when  the  poor  child  had  drank  two 
glasses  of  wine,  "we  are  both  sensible  men  and  can 
talk  frankly.  I  did  not  come  here  because  I  am 
suspicious.  Beatrix  loves  me,"  he  added  with  a  most 
fatuous  gesture.  "But  I  no  longer  love  her;  1  did 
not  come  here  to  take  her  away,  but  to  break  with 
her  and  leave  her  the  honors  of  the  rupture.  You 
are  young,  you  don't  know  how  advantageous  a 
thing  it  is  to  seem  to  be  the  victim,  when  you  know 
that  you  are  the  executioner.  Young  men  flash  fire 
and  flames,  they  abandon  a  woman  with  a  great 
noise,  they  often  treat  her  with  contempt  and  earn 
her  hatred;  but  judicious  men  arrange  matters  so 
that  they  are  dismissed  themselves,  and  assume  a 
humiliated  air  which  leaves  to  the  woman  regret 
and  a  soothing  consciousness  of  her  superiority. 
The  disfavor  of  the  divinity  is  not  irreparable, 
while  abjuration  is  beyond  remedy.  Luckily  for 
you,  you  do  not  as  yet  know  how  embarrassed  we 
are  throughout  our  lives  by  the  insensate  promises 
women   are  foolish  enough   to   accept,  when  the 


324  BEATRIX 

exigencies  of  gallantry  require  us  to  weave  slip  knots 
with  them  to  employ  the  leisure  hours  of  happiness. 
Then  we  swear  to  belong  to  each  other  forever.  If 
we  have  an  intrigue  with  a  woman,  we  never  fail  to 
tell  her  politely  that  we  would  like  to  pass  our  life 
with  her ;  we  pretend  to  await  with  the  greatest 
impatience  the  death  of  a  husband  while  we  really 
hope  that  he  enjoys  the  most  perfect  health.  Let 
the  husband  die,  and  there  are  provincial  dames  or 
perverse  creatures,  foolish  or  sly  enough  to  come 
running  to  you  with  a:  'Here  I  am,  I  am  free!' 
No  one  of  us  is  free.  The  cannon-ball  death  awakes 
and  falls  in  the  midst  of  our  proudest  triumphs  or 
our  most  skilfully  arranged  pleasures.  I  saw  that 
you  would  fall  in  love  with  Beatrix,  and  I  left  her 
in  a  position  where,  without  abating  one  whit  of 
her  sacred  majesty,  she  would  surely  flirt  with  you, 
were  it  only  to  annoy  that  angel  of  a  Camille 
Maupin.  Well,  my  dearest  boy,  love  her  and  you 
will  do  me  a  favor,  for  I  want  her  to  treat  me 
shamefully.  I  am  afraid  of  her  pride  and  her  vir- 
tue. Perhaps,  despite  my  good  will,  we  shall  need 
time  to  manage  this  criss-cross  arrangement  On 
such  occasions  as  this,  it  is  to  one's  advantage  not 
to  begin  the  fire.  As  we  walked  about  the  garden 
just  now,  I  undertook  to  tell  her  that  1  knew  all  and 
to  congratulate  her  on  her  good-fortune.  Would  you 
believe  it?  she  lost  her  temper.  At  this  moment,  I 
am  over  head  and  ears  in  love  with  the  youngest 
and  loveliest  of  our  cantatrices.  Mademoiselle  Fal- 
con, of  the  Opera,  and  I  mean  to  marry  her !    Yes, 


BEATRIX  325 

I  am  as  far  gone  as  that ;  but,  when  you  come  to 
Paris,  you  will  see  that  I  have  exchanged  the  mar- 
chioness for  a  queen!" 

Joy  spread  its  halo  about  the  open-hearted 
Calyste's  countenance;  he  confessed  his  love  and 
that  was  all  that  Conti  wanted.  There  is  no  man, 
however  depraved,  however  surfeited  he  may  be, 
whose  passion  does  not  rekindle  the  instant  that 
he  finds  it  threatened  by  a  rival.  You  may  de- 
sire to  abandon  a  woman,  but  you  do  not  choose 
that  she  shall  abandon  you.  When  lovers  reach 
that  extremity,  men  and  women  do  their  utmost  to 
take  the  lead,  so  deep  is  the  wound  inflicted  upon 
the  self-esteem.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  the 
struggle  involves  all  that  society  has  included  in 
that  sentiment,  which  is  not  so  much  self-esteem  as 
life  itself,  whose  future  is  threatened  at  such  crises; 
it  seems  as  if  one  were  losing  his  principal  and 
not  his  income.  Questioned  by  the  artist,  Calyste 
narrated  all  that  had  taken  place  at  Les  Touches 
during  the  past  three  weeks,  and  was  delighted 
with  the  conduct  of  Conti,  who  dissembled  his  rage 
beneath  a  mask  of  charming  good-fellowship. 

"Let  us  go  upstairs,"  said  he.  "Women  are 
suspicious  creatures,  they  won't  understand  how  we 
can  remain  together  without  tearing  each  other's 
hair  out,  and  they  may  come  and  listen.  I  will  help 
you  all  I  can,  my  dear  boy.  I  shall  be  rough  and 
unendurable  with  the  marchioness,  I  shall  pretend 
to  be  jealous  and  to  suspect  her  constantly  of  be- 
traying me;   there's   no  better  way  of  driving  a 


326  BEATRIX 

woman  to  treachery;  your  desires  will  be  gratified 
and  I  shall  be  free.  Play  the  part  of  a  disappointed 
lover  to-night,  and  I  will  be  the  jealous,  suspicious 
man.  Pity  the  angel  because  she  belongs  to  a  man 
of  no  delicacy;  weep  over  her!  You  can  weep,  for 
you  are  young.  Alas!  I  can  no  longer  weep;  that 
is  one  great  advantage  that  1  lack." 

Calyste  and  Conti  went  upstairs.  The  musi- 
cian, being  requested  by  his  youthful  rival  to  sing, 
sang  the  greatest  musical  masterpiece  in  existence 
for  concert  singers,  the  famous  Pria  che  spunti  V au- 
rora, which  Rubini  himself  never  attempts  with- 
out a  tremor,  and  in  which  Conti  had  won  many 
a  triumph.  He  was  never  more  superb  than  at 
that  moment  when  so  many  emotions  were  raging 
in  his  breast. 

Calyste  was  in  ecstasy.  At  the  first  word  of  the 
cavatina,  the  artist  gave  the  marchioness  a  glance 
which  imparted  a  cruel  meaning  to  the  words — a 
meaning  that  she  understood.  Camille,  who  was 
playing  the  accompaniment,  divined  the  command 
expressed  in  that  glance,  which  made  Beatrix  hang 
her  head;  she  looked  at  Calyste  and  concluded  that 
the  boy  had  fallen  into  some  trap  or  other,  notwith- 
standing her  warning.  She  was  certain  of  it  when 
the  joyous  Breton  went  up  to  Beatrix  to  bid  her 
good-night,  from  the  confident,  crafty  manner  with 
which  he  kissed  her  hand   and  pressed  it. 

Before  Calyste  reached  Guerande,  the  maid  and 
other  servants  were  loading  the  luggage  upon 
Conti's  traveling  carriage,  and  at  daybreak,  as  he 


BEATRIX  327 

had  said,  he  was  driving  Beatrix  away  to  the  first 
posting  station,  with  Camille's  horses.  Under 
cover  of  the  darkness,  Madame  de  Rochefide  was 
enabled  to  gaze  at  the  town,  whose  towers,  whitened 
by  the  first  rays  of  dawn,  glistened  in  the  twilight, 
and  to  abandon  herself  to  her  profound  melancholy : 
she  was  leaving  behind  one  of  the  loveliest  flowers 
of  her  life,  such  a  passion  as  the  purest  maidens 
dream  of  inspiring.  Fear  of  the  world  shattered 
the  only  genuine  love  this  woman  had  ever  known 
or  was  likely  ever  to  know  in  her  whole  life.  The 
society  woman  obeyed  the  laws  of  society,  she  sac- 
rificed love  to  appearances,  as  other  women  sacrifice 
it  to  religion  or  duty.  Pride  often  rises  to  the  level 
of  virtue.  From  this  point  of  view,  this  ghastly 
story  is  the  story  of  many  women.  The  next  day, 
Calyste  came  to  Les  Touches  about  noon.  When 
he  reached  that  point  in  the  road  from  which  on  the 
previous  morning  he  had  seen  Beatrix  at  the  win- 
dow, he  saw  Camille  there.  She  ran  to  meet  him 
and  flung  this  cruel  word  at  him  at  the  foot  of  the 
stairs: 

"Gone!" 

"Beatrix?"  said  Calyste,  aghast. 

"Conti  hoodwinked  you  completely;  you  said 
nothing  to  me,  so  I  could  do  nothing." 

She  led  the  poor  youth  into  her  little  salon;  he 
threw  himself  on  the  divan,  in  the  room  where  he 
had  so  often  seen  the  marchioness,  and  burst  into 
tears.  Felicite  said  nothing,  but  smoked  her  hookah 
in  silence,  knowing  that  there  is  nothing  to  be  done 


328  BEATRIX 

during  the  first  paroxysms  of  grief,  which  are  always 
deaf  and  dumb.  Calyste,  having  no  idea  what  to 
do,  passed  the  whole  day  in  utter  dejection.  Just 
before  dinner  was  announced,  Camille  attempted  to 
say  a  few  words  to  him,  after  entreating  him  to 
listen  to  her. 

"My  friend,  you  have  once  more  caused  me 
bitter  suffering  and  I  have  not,  as  you  have,  a 
happy  life  before  me  to  effect  a  cure.  For  me  the 
earth  has  no  more  springtime,  the  heart  has  no 
more  love.  Therefore  I  have  to  look  higher  for 
consolation.  In  this  room,  on  the  day  before 
Beatrix  came,  I  drew  her  portrait  for  you;  I  did  not 
wish  to  speak  ill  of  her  to  you,  for  you  would  have 
thought  me  jealous  of  her.  Now,  listen  to  the  truth. 
Madame  de  Rochefide  is  very,  very  far  from  being 
worthy  of  you.  The  publicity  of  her  fall  was  en- 
tirely unnecessary,  but  she  would  have  amounted 
to  nothing  without  that  fuss,  so  she  went  about  it 
in  cold  blood  in  order  to  give  herself  a  leading  role: 
she  is  one  of  those  women  who  prefer  the  scandal 
of  a  sin  to  tranquil  happiness ;  they  insult  society 
to  obtain  the  fatal  boon  of  calumny,  they  are  deter- 
mined to  make  themselves  talked  about  at  any 
price.  She  was  consumed  with  vanity.  Her  for- 
tune, her  wit  had  proved  ineffectual  to  obtain  for 
her  the  feminine  royalty  she  sought  to  win  for  her- 
self by  erecting  a  throne  in  a  salon ;  she  thought 
she  could  acquire  the  celebrity  of  the  Duchesse  de 
Langeais  and  the  Vicomtesse  de  Beauseant;  but 
the   world  is  just  and   bestows  the   honor   of   its 


BEATRIX  329 

interest  on  none  but  genuine  sentiments.  Beatrix 
in  a  comedy  part  is  voted  a  second-rate  actress.  Her 
flight  to  Italy  was  justified  by  no  emergency.  The 
sword  of  Damocles  did  not  gleam  at  her  f^tes,  and, 
moreover,  it  is  very  easy  to  be  happy  on  the  sly  in 
Paris,  when  one  loves  deeply  and  sincerely.  In  a 
word,  had  she  been  simply  a  loving,  devoted 
woman,  she  would  not  have  gone  with  Conti  that 
night" 

Camille  talked  for  a  long  while  and  very  elo- 
quently; but  this  final  effort  was  unavailing,  and 
she  ceased  at  a  gesture  from  Calyste  expressive  of 
absolute  faith  in  Beatrix;  she  compelled  him  to  go 
down  and  sit  with  her  while  she  dined,  for  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  eat. 

It  is  only  during  extreme  youth  that  these  con- 
tractions of  the  heart  take  place.  Later,  the  organs 
fall  into  regular  habits  and  become  hardened,  so  to 
speak.  The  reaction  of  mental  emotions  upon  the 
physique  is  not  powerful  enough  to  produce  a  mortal 
disease  unless  the  system  has  retained  its  primitive 
delicacy.  An  adult  resists  a  violent  wrench  which 
kills  a  younger  man,  not  so  much  because  his 
affections  are  weaker  as  because  his  organs  are 
stronger.  So  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  was  terri- 
fied at  first  by  the  calm  and  resigned  attitude  as- 
sumed by  Calyste  after  his  first  flood  of  tears. 
Before  leaving  her,  he  requested  permission  to  see 
Beatrix's  chamber  once  more,  and  buried  his  head 
in  the  pillow  upon  which  hers  had  rested. 

"I  am  acting  like  a  madman,"  he  said,  grasping 


330  BEATRIX 

Camille's    hand   and   leaving    her   with    profound 
melancholy. 

He  returned  home,  found  the  usual  party  absorbed 
in  their  game  of  mottche,  and  sat  beside  his  mother 
the  whole  evening.  The  cure,  the  Chevalier  du 
Halga  and  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  all  knew  of 
Madame  de  Rochefide's  departure,  and  were  all  de- 
lighted. Calyste  would  come  back  to  them  now, 
they  thought;  consequently  they  all  watched  him 
almost  gloomily,  as  they  saw  that  he  was  inclined 
to  be  taciturn.  No  one  in  that  old  manor  could 
realize  the  inevitable  end  of  that  passion  in  a  heart 
so  innocent  and  sincere  as  Calyste's. 


For  some  days,  Calyste  went  regularly  to  Les 
Touches;  he  walked  back  and  forth  around  the 
greensward,  where  he  had  sometimes  walked  with 
Beatrix  on  his  arm.  Often  he  went  to  Le  Croisic 
and  climbed  to  the  rock  from  which  he  had  tried  to 
push  her  into  the  sea:  he  would  remain  for  hours 
lying  against  the  box-wood,  for,  by  dint  of  studying 
the  projections  and  points  of  support  in  the  cleft,  he 
had  learned  how  to  let  himself  down  into  it  and 
climb  up  again. 

His  solitary  walks,  his  silence  and  his  sober  face 
aroused  his  mother's  anxiety  at  last  After  a  fort- 
night of  this  life,  not  unlike  that  of  a  caged  wild 
beast — this  despairing  lover's  cage  was,  as  La  Fon- 
taine expresses  it,  the  places  honored  by  the  steps, 
illumined  by  the  eyes  of  Beatrix — Calyste  ceased  to 
cross  the  little  arm  of  the  sea;  he  felt  too  weak  to 
do  more  than  drag  himself  as  far  as  that  spot  on  the 
Guerande  road  from  which  he  had  seen  Beatrix  at 
the  window.  The  family,  overjoyed  at  the  depart- 
ure of  the  Parisians,  to  use  the  provincial  expres- 
sion, detected  nothing  ominous  or  indicative  of  ill 
health  in  Calyste's  appearance.  The  two  old  maids 
and.  the  cure,  carrying  out  their  plan,  had  kept 
Charlotte  de  Kergarouet  at  Guerande,  and  she 
lavished  her  cajoleries  upon  Calyste  every  evening, 
but  obtained  nothing  from  him  save  advice  as  to 
(331) 


332  BEATRIX 

playing  her  hand  at  motiche.  Throughout  the  even- 
ing, Calyste  would  sit  between  his  mother  and  his 
would-be,  Breton  fiancee,  closely  watched  by  the 
cure  and  by  Charlotte's  aunt,  who,  as  they  returned 
home,  discussed  his  more  or  less  evident  dejection. 
They  mistook  the  unhappy  youth's  indifference  for 
submission  to  their  projects. 

One  evening,  when  Calyste  had  gone  early  to 
bed,  thoroughly  worn  out,  they  all  laid  their  cards 
on  the  table  and  looked  at  one  another  as  they  heard 
his  chamber  door  close.  They  had  listened  anxiously 
to  the  sound  of  his  footsteps. 

"Something  is  wrong  with  Calyste,"  said  the 
baroness,  wiping  her  eyes. 

"Nothing  is  wrong  with  him,"  rejoined  Made- 
moiselle de  Pen-Hoel;  "we  must  marry  him  off  at 
once." 

"Do  you  think  that  will  divert  him?"  said  the 
chevalier. 

Charlotte  gazed  sternly  at  Monsieur  du  Halga, 
who  seemed  to  her,  that  evening,  to  be  very  ill- 
bred,  immoral,  depraved,  irreligious,  and  absurd 
with  his  dog,  notwithstanding  the  observations  of 
her  aunt,  who  defended  the  old  sailor. 

"To-morrow  morning,  I  will  give  Calyste  a  lec- 
ture," said  the  baron,  whom  they  thought  asleep; 
"I  would  not  like  to  leave  this  world  without  seeing 
my  grandson,  a  pink  and  white  Guenir,  lying  in 
his  cradle  with  a  Breton  cap  on  his  head." 

"He  doesn't  say  a  word,"  said  old  Zephirine, 
"so  no  one  can  tell  what  is  the  matter  with  him ; 


BEATRIX  333 

he  never  ate  so  little ;  what  does  he  live  on  ?  if  he 
takes  any  meals  at  Les  Touches  the  devil's  kitchen 
does  him  little  good." 

"He's  in  love,"  said  the  chevalier,  putting  forth 
the  suggestion  with  excessive  timidity. 

"Come,  come,  you  old  rake!  you  haven't  put 
anything  in  the  pot,"  said  Mademoiselle  de  Pen- 
Hoel.  "When  you  begin  to  think  about  your 
young  days,  you  forget  everything  else." 

"Come  and  take  luncheon  with  us  to-morrow  morn- 
ing,"  said  old  Zephirine  to  Jacqueline  and  Charlotte ; 
"my  brother  will  talk  some  reason  into  his  son, 
and  we  will  arrange  everything.  One  nail  drives 
out  the  other." 

"Not  among  the  Bretons,"  said  the  chevalier. 

The  next  morning  Calyste  saw  Charlotte  enter 
the  house,  dressed  with  extraordinary  elegance,  just 
as  the  baron  in  the  dining-room  was  finishing  a  dis- 
course on  the  subject  of  matrimony  to  which  he 
was  unable  to  find  any  reply;  he  was  well 
aware  of  the  ignorance  of  his  father,  his  mother, 
his  aunt  and  their  friends;  he  was  reaping  the 
fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowledge;  he  found  him- 
self completely  isolated  from  them  and  he  no  longer 
spoke  the  domestic  language.  So  he  simply  asked 
his  father  for  a  delay  of  a  few  days,  whereupon  the 
baron  rubbed  his  hands  for  joy  and  gave  the  baron- 
ess new  life  by  whispering  the  good  news  in  her  ear. 

The  luncheon  was  very  animating.  Charlotte, 
who  had  received  a  significant  signal  from  the  baron, 
was  bubbling  over  with  high  spirits.     The  rumor  of 


334  BEATRIX 

a  perfect  understanding  between  the  Du  Guenics 
and  the  Kergarouets  leaked  out  through  Gasselin 
and  spread  all  over  the  town.  After  luncheon, 
Calyste  followed  Charlotte  into  the  garden  from  the 
large  hall ;  he  offered  her  his  arm  and  led  her  be- 
neath the  arbor  at  the  further  end  of  the  garden. 
The  old  people  were  at  the  window,  watching  them 
with  deep  emotion.  Charlotte  turned  and  looked 
back  at  the  attractive  garden  front  of  the  house, 
and  considerably  disturbed  by  her  companion's 
silence,  seized  upon  the  fact  as  a  pretext  for  begin- 
ning the  conversation. 

"They  are  watching  us!"  she  said. 

"They  don't  hear  what  we  say." 

"No,  but  they  can  see  us." 

"Let  us  sit  down,  Charlotte,"  rejoined  Calyste 
gently,  taking  her  hand. 

"Is  it  true  that  your  banner  used  to  wave  at  the 
top  of  that  twisted  column.?"  queried  Charlotte, 
looking  at  the  house  as  if  it  were  already  her  own. 
"It  would  look  well  there!  How  happy  one  could 
be  here !  You  will  make  some  changes  in  the  in- 
terior of  the  house,  won't  you,  Calyste.?" 

"I  shall  not  have  time,  my  dear  Charlotte,"  said 
the  young  man,  taking  both  her  hands  and  kissing 
them.  "I  am  going  to  entrust  you  with  my  secret. 
1  love  a  certain  person — a  person  whom  you  have 
seen  and  who  loves  me — too  dearly  to  be  able  to 
make  any  other  woman  happy,  although  I  know 
that  we  have  been  destined  for  each  other  from  our 
childhood.'* 


BEATRIX  335 

**But  she  is  married,  Calyste,"  said  Charlotte. 

"I  will  wait,"  the  young  man  replied. 

"And  so  will  I,"  said  Charlotte,  as  her  eyes  filled 
with  tears.  "You  will  not  love  that  woman  long; 
she  went  away  with  a  singer,  they  say — " 

"Marry,  my  dear  Charlotte,"  Calyste  interposed. 
"With  the  fortune  your  aunt  proposes  to  give  you 
— and  it  is  an  enormous  one  for  Bretagne — you  can 
choose  a  better  man  than  I  am.  You  will  find  some 
man  with  a  title.  I  did  not  take  you  aside  to  tell 
you  what  you  already  know,  but  to  conjure  you,  in 
the  name  of  our  childish  friendship,  to  take  the 
rupture  upon  yourself  and  refuse  my  hand.  Say 
that  you  will  not  accept  a  man  whose  heart  is  not 
free,  and  my  passion  will  not,  at  all  events,  have  the 
effect  of  putting  an  affront  upon  you.  You  cannot 
imagine  what  a  burden  life  is  to  me!  1  cannot 
maintain  a  contest  of  any  sort;  I  am  as  weak  as  a 
man  abandoned  by  his  soul,  by  the  very  essence  of 
his  life.  Except  for  the  grief  my  death  would  cause 
my  mother  and  my  aunt  I  should  have  thrown  my- 
self into  the  sea  before  this,  and  I  have  never  visited 
the  cliffs  of  Le  Croisic  since  the  day  when  the 
temptation  became  almost  irresistible.  Do  not 
speak  of  this.     Adieu,  Charlotte. " 

He  drew  the  girl's  head  toward  him,  kissed  her 
on  the  hair,  left  the  garden  by  the  path  leading 
from  the  gable  end  of  the  house,  and  fled  to  Camille, 
with  whom  he  remained  until  midnight 

When  he  returned  home  at  one  o'clock  in  the 
morning  he  found  his  mother  at  her  embroidery 


336  BEATRIX 

frame  waiting  for  him.  He  entered  the  house  softly, 
pressed  her  hand  and  asked : 

"Has  Charlotte  gone  ?" 

"She  goes  to-morrow  with  her  aunt,  to  the 
despair  of  both.  Come  to  Ireland,  dear  Calyste," 
said  she. 

"How  many  times  I  have  thought  of  flying 
thither!"  he  replied. 

"Ah!"  cried  the  baroness. 

"With  Beatrix,"  he  added. 

A  few  days  after  Charlotte's  departure,  Calyste 
accompanied  the  Chevalier  du  Halga  during  his 
promenade  on  the  mall  and  sat  down  in  the  sun 
upon  a  bench  from  which  his  eyes  embraced  the 
whole  countryside,  from  the  weathercocks  of  Les 
Touches  to  the  reefs  whose  location  is  indicated 
by  the  foaming  ripples  that  play  above  submerged 
rocks.  Calyste  was,  at  this  moment,  thin  and  pale, 
his  strength  was  failing,  he  was  beginning  to  feel 
the  intermittent  chills  that  denote  the  approach  of 
fever.  His  eyes,  surrounded  by  dark  rings,  had  the 
feverish  brilliancy  that  constant  brooding  thought 
imparts  to  the  eyes  of  recluses,  or  the  ardor  of  com- 
bat to  those  of  the  intrepid  fighters  of  our  present 
civilization.  The  chevalier  was  the  only  person 
with  whom  he  exchanged  a  word  now  and  then :  he 
had  discovered  in  the  old  man  an  apostle  of  his  own 
religion,  and  had  detected  in  him  the  vestiges  of  an 
undying  passion. 

"Have  you  loved  more  than  one  woman  in  your 
life.?"  he  asked,  the  second  time  that  they  made 


BEATRIX  337 

sail  in  company  on  the  mall,  as  the  old  sailor  ex- 
pressed it 

"Only  one,"  replied  the  chevalier. 

"Was  she  free  ?" 

"No,"  was  the  reply.  "Ah!  I  suffered  terribly! 
she  was  the  wife  of  my  best  friend,  my  patron,  my 
commander,  but  we  loved  each  other  so  well !" 

"Did  she  love  you?"  Calyste  asked. 

"Passionately,"  the  chevalier  replied  with  far 
more  than  his  usual  animation. 

"Were  you  happy.?" 

"Until  her  death;  she  died  at  forty-nine,  during 
the  emigration,  at  Saint  Petersburg;  the  climate 
there  killed  her.  She  must  be  very  cold  in  her 
coffin !  I  have  often  thought  of  going  there  for  her 
body  and  bringing  it  to  our  dear  Bretagne,  to  lie  be- 
side me!     But  she  sleeps  in  my  heart" 

The  chevalier  wiped  his  eyes;  Calyste  took  his 
hands  and  pressed  them. 

"I  think  more  of  this  dog  than  of  my  life,"  said 
he,  pointing  to  Thisbe.  The  little  creature  resem- 
bles in  every  respect  the  one  she  caressed  with  her 
lovely  hands  and  took  upon  her  knees.  I  never 
look  at  Thisbe  without  seeing  Madame  I'Amirale's 
hands." 

"Did  you  see  Madame  de  Rochefide?"  inquired 
Calyste. 

"No,"  the  chevalier  replied.  "For  fifty-eight 
years  I  have  taken  no  notice  of  any  woman  except 
your  mother,  who  has  something  of  Madame 
I'Amirale's  complexion." 

22 


338  BEATRIX 

Three  days  later,  the  chevalier  said  to  Calyste 
on  the  mall : 

"My  boy,  I  have  only  a  hundred  and  forty  louis  in 
the  world.  When  you  find  out  where  Madame  de 
Rochefide  is,  come  to  me  and  get  them  so  that  you 
may  go  and  see  her." 

Calyste  thanked  the  old  man,  whose  placid  ex- 
istence aroused  his  envy.  But,  from  day  to  day  he 
became  more  morose,  he  appeared  to  care  for  no 
one,  it  seemed  as  if  everybody  did  something  to 
wound  him ;  he  was  now  gentle  and  good-humored 
only  with  his  mother.  The  baroness  followed  with 
increasing  anxiety  the  progress  of  his  madness ;  she 
only,  by  dint  of  persistent  entreaty,  could  succeed 
in  inducing  Calyste  to  eat. 

Toward  the  beginning  of  October,  the  young  in- 
valid ceased  to  go  to  the  mall  with  the  chevalier,  who 
came  unavailingly  to  the  house  to  take  him  to  walk, 
exerting  all  the  power  of  an  old  man's  cajolery. 

"We  will  talk  about  Madame  de  Rochefide,"  he 
would  say.  "I'll  tell  you  about  my  first  affair." — 
"Your  son  is  very  ill,"  he  said  to  the  baroness, 
when  his  entreaties  proved  useless. 

Calyste  answered  all  inquiries  to  the  effect  that 
he  was  marvelously  well,  and  like  all  melancholy 
youths,  he  took  pleasure  in  tasting  death  before- 
hand ;  but  he  no  longer  left  the  house,  except  to  go 
into  the  garden,  where  he  would  sit  upon  the  bench, 
warming  himself  in  the  pale,  warm  autumn  sun- 
light, alone  with  his  thoughts,  avoiding  all  compan- 
ionship. 


BEATRIX  339 

When  Calyste  ceased  to  come  to  Les  Touches, 
Felicite  wrote  to  the  cure  of  Guerande  begging  him 
to  call  upon  her.  Abbe  Grimont's  assiduity  there- 
after, when  he  fell  into  the  habit  of  passing  every 
morning  at  Guerande  and  sometimes  dining  there, 
created  a  great  sensation ;  it  was  talked  about  all 
over  the  neighborhood  and  even  at  Nantes.  Never- 
theless, he  never  missed  an  evening  at  the  Hotel  du 
Guenic,  where  desolation  reigned.  Masters  and 
servants,  all  were  equally  distressed  by  Calyste's 
obstinacy,  without  realizing  his  real  danger;  it  did 
not  occur  to  one  of  those  good  people  that  the  poor 
young  man  might  die  of  love.  The  chevalier  had 
fallen  in  with  no  instance  of  such  a  death  in  his 
travels,  and  had  heard  of  none.  They  all  attributed 
Calyste's  thinness  to  lack  of  food.  His  mother 
went  on  her  knees  to  him,  begging  him  to  eat 
Calyste,  to  please  his  mother,  strove  to  conquer 
his  repugnance.  Food  swallowed  against  his  will, 
hastened  the  progress  of  the  slow  fever  that  was 
consuming  the  handsome  youth. 

In  the  latter  part  of  October,  the  beloved  child 
ceased  to  go  up  to  the  second  floor  to  sleep ;  his  bed 
was  placed  in  the  lower  hall,  and  there  he  remained 
most  of  the  time,  surrounded  by  his  family,  who 
had  recourse  at  last  to  the  village  doctor.  He  tried 
to  break  up  the  fever  with  quinine,  and  the  fever 
yielded  for  a  few  days.  He  prescribed  physical  ex- 
ercise and  distraction.  The  baron  summoned  up 
some  energy  and  emerged  from  his  apathy ;  he  be- 
came young  again  as  his  son  grew  old.     He  took  out 


340  BEATRIX 

Calyste,  Gasselin  and  his  two  noble  hunting  dogs. 
Calyste  complied  with  his  father's  wishes,  and  for 
a  few  days,  the  three  hunted  together ;  they  went 
into  the  forest,  they  visited  their  friends  in  the 
neighboring  chateau;  but  Calyste  showed  no  sign 
of  cheerfulness,  no  one  could  extort  a  smile  from 
him,  his  livid,  distorted  features  betrayed  an  entire 
absence  of  volition. 

The  baron,  overcome  by  fatigue,  fell  into  a  horri- 
ble state  of  lassitude  and  was  obliged  to  return 
home,  taking  Calyste  with  him  in  the  same  condi- 
tion. A  few  days  after  their  return,  the  father  and 
son  were  both  so  dangerously  ill  that  they  were 
obliged  to  send  for  the  two  most  famous  doctors  in 
Nantes,  at  the  suggestion  of  the  Guerande  practi- 
tioner himself.  The  baron  had  been  fairly  crushed  by 
the  marked  change  in  Calyste.  Endowed  with  the 
startling  clearness  of  vision  which  nature  bestows 
upon  the  moribund,  he  trembled  like  a  child  at  the 
thought  of  the  extinction  of  his  race :  he  said  noth- 
ing, but  clasped  his  hands  and  prayed,  sitting  in 
his  armchair  to  which  his  weakness  confined  him. 
His  face  was  turned  toward  Calyste's  bed  and  he 
watched  him  incessantly.  At  his  son's  slightest 
movement,  he  felt  a  painful  internal  commotion  as 
if  the  torch  of  his  life  were  flickering. 

The  baroness  passed  all  her  time  in  the  hall, 
where  old  Zephirine  sat  knitting  in  the  chimney 
corner  in  a  distressing  state  of  anxiety;  they  were 
constantly  asking  her  for  wood,  for  the  father  and 
son  were  quite  cold  all  the  time ;  they  attacked  her 


BEATRIX  341 

provisions ;  indeed,  she  had  at  last  made  up  her  mind 
to  give  up  her  keys,  being  no  longer  sufficiently 
active  to  follow  Mariotte;  but  she  insisted  upon 
knowing  everything,  she  questioned  Mariotte  and 
her  sister-in-law,  in  an  undertone,  every  minute  in 
the  day;  she  took  them  aside  in  order  to  ascertain 
the  condition  of  her  brother  and  her  nephew. 

One  evening,  while  Calyste  and  the  baron  were 
both  dozing,  old  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  told  her 
that  there  was  no  doubt  that  she  must  resign  herself 
to  the  baron's  death,  for  his  face  had  turned  to  the 
color  of  wax;  whereupon  she  dropped  her  knitting, 
felt  in  her  pocket,  from  which  she  produced  an  old 
rosary  of  black  wood,  and  began  to  tell  her  beads 
with  a  fervor  which  imparted  such  energy  and 
grandeur  to  her  pinched,  withered  face,  that  the 
other  old  maid  followed  her  friend's  example;  with 
that,  all  the  others,  at  a  signal  from  the  cure,  joined 
Mademoiselle  du  Guenic  in  her  mental  exaltation. 

"I  was  the  first  to  pray  God  for  him,"  said  the 
baroness,  remembering  the  fatal  letter  written  by 
Calyste,  "and  he  did  not  listen  to  me!" 

"Perhaps  we  should  do  well,"  said  Abbe  Gri- 
mont,  "to  ask  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  to  come 
and  see  Calyste." 

"She!"  cried  old  Zephirine,  "the  author  of  all 
our  woes,  who  turned  him  against  his  family,  took 
him  away  from  us,  gave  him  wicked  books  to  read 
and  taught  him  the  language  of  heretics !  My  curse 
on  her,  and  may  God  never  forgive  her !  She  has 
crushed  the  Du  Guenics." 


342  BEATRIX 

"She  will  raise  them  again,  perhaps,"  said  the 
cure,  gently.  "She  is  a  devout  and  virtuous 
woman;  I  will  answer  for  it  that  she  has  only  the 
best  of  intentions  concerning  him.  May  she  be 
able  to  carry  them  out!" 

"Let  me  know  the  day  that  she  is  to  set  her  foot 
in  this  house,  and  I  will  leave  it,"  cried  the  old 
maid.  "She  has  killed  the  father  and  the  son.  Do 
you  suppose  I  don't  hear  Calyste's  feeble  voice.? 
He  has  hardly  strength  enough  to  speak." 

At  that  moment,  the  three  doctors  came  in ;  they 
wearied  Calyste  with  questions;  but  their  exami- 
nation of  the  father  lasted  but  a  short  time ;  they 
were  agreed  in  a  moment  that  it  was  marvelous 
that  he  was  still  alive.  The  doctor  from  Guerande 
coolly  informed  the  baroness,  with  reference  to 
Calyste,  that  it  would  probably  be  necessary  to 
take  him  to  Paris  to  consult  the  most  eminent 
specialists,  as  it  would  cost  a  hundred  louis  to  bring 
them  to  Bretagne. 

"People  die  of  something;  but  love  is  nothing," 
said  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel. 

"Alas!  whatever  the  cause,  Calyste  is  dying," 
said  the  baroness;  "I  can  see  that  he  has  all  the 
symptoms  of  consumption,  the  most  horrible  disease 
known  in  my  country." 

"Calyste  is  dying,  do  you  say.?"  said  the  baron, 
opening  his  eyes,  from  which  two  great  tears  crept 
and  retarded  by  the  numerous  wrinkles,  trickled 
slowly  down  to  the  bottom  of  his  cheeks, — the  only 
tears,  in  all  likelihood,  that  he  had  shed  in  his  life. 


BEATRIX  343 

He  stood  up,  tottered  to  his  son's  bed,  took  his 
hands  and  gazed  earnestly  at  him. 

"What  do  you  want,  father?"  said  Calyste. 

"I  want  you  to  live!"  cried  the  baron. 

"1  could  not  live  without  Beatrix,"  Calyste  re- 
plied, and  the  old  man  fell  back  into  his  chair. 

"Where  can  we  get  a  hundred  louis  to  bring  the 
doctors  from  Paris?"  said  the  baroness.  "It  is  not 
too  late." 

"A  hundred  louis!"  cried  Zephirine.  "Would  it 
save  his  life?" 

Without  awaiting  her  sister-in-law's  reply,  the 
old  maid  put  her  hands  through  the  placket  hole  of 
her  dress  and  unfastened  her  under  petticoat,  which 
fell  to  the  floor  with  a  dull  thud.  She  knew  so  well 
the  places  in  which  she  had  sewn  her  louis,  that 
she  ripped  them  out  with  a  celerity  that  smacked 
of  magic.  The  gold  pieces  fell  into  her  lap  one  by 
one  with  a  jingling  noise.  Old  Mademoiselle  de 
Pen-Hoel  watched  her,  paralyzed  with  amazement 

"Why,  they're  looking  at  you!"  said  she  in  her 
friend's  ear. 

"Thirty-seven,"  said  Zephirine,  continuing  her 
count 

"Everyone  will  know  how  many  you  have." 

"Forty-two — " 

"Double  louis,  all  new:  where  did  you  get  them, 
since  you  can't  see?" 

"1  felt  them.  Here  are  a  hundred  and  forty 
louis,"  cried  Zephirine.     "Will  that  be  enough?" 

"What  has  happened  to  you?"   demanded  the 


344  BEATRIX 

Chevalier  du  Halga,  who  came  in  at  that  moment, 
and  was  unable  to  understand  his  old  friend's  atti- 
tude, with  her  lap  full  of  louis. 

In  two  words.  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  explained 
the  condition  of  affairs  to  the  chevalier. 

"I  knew  all  about  it,"  he  said,  "and  I  came  to 
bring  you  a  hundred  and  forty  louis,  which  I  put  at 
Calyste's  disposal,  as  he  well  knows." 

The  chevalier  took  two  rolls  of  money  from  his 
pocket,  and  exhibited  the  contents.  Mariotte,  when 
she  saw  this  accumulation  of  treasure,  told  Gasselin 
to  close  the  door. 

"Gold  won't  restore  him  to  health,"  said  the 
baroness,  weeping. 

"But  it  may  serve  to  enable  him  to  run  after  the 
marchioness,"  rejoined  the  chevalier.  "Come, 
Calyste!" 

Calyste  sat  up  in  bed  and  cried  joyfully: 

"Let  us  start!" 

"He  will  live,"  said  the  baron  in  a  suffering 
tone,  "and  I  can  die.     Send  for  the  cure." 

His  words  caused  a  thrill  of  dismay.  Calyste, 
when  he  saw  his  father  turn  as  pale  as  death  under 
the  strain  of  the  cruel  emotions  aroused  by  this 
scene,  could  not  keep  back  his  tears.  The  cure, 
who  knew  of  the  decision  arrived  at  by  the  doctors, 
had  gone  to  consult  Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  for 
his  present  admiration  for  her  was  as  great  as  had 
been  his  former  repugnance,  and  he  defended  her  as 
a  pastor  should  defend  one  of  the  favorite  sheep  of 
his  flock. 


BEATRIX  345 

A  number  of  people  had  assembled  in  the  lane  at 
the  news  of  the  baron's  desperate  condition :  peas- 
ants, paludiers  and  townspeople  knelt  in  the  court- 
yard while  Abbe  Grimont  administered  the  sacra- 
ments to  the  old  Breton  warrior.  The  whole  town 
was  deeply  moved  to  learn  that  the  father  was 
dying  beside  his  sick  son.  The  extinction  of  this 
venerable  Breton  family  was  looked  upon  as  a  pub- 
lic calamity. 

The  ceremony  made  a  deep  impression  upon 
Calyste.  His  grief  imposed  silence  for  a  moment 
upon  his  love;  during  the  dying  agony  of  the  heroic 
defender  of  the  monarchy,  he  knelt  beside  his  bed, 
weeping,  and  watching  the  approach  of  death.  The 
old  man  breathed  his  last  in  his  armchair,  in  the 
presence  of  his  whole  family. 

I  die  faithful  to  the  king  and  the  religion.  O 
God,  I  pray  Thee  to  allow  Calyste  to  live,  as  the 
reward  of  my  efforts!"  he  said. 

"Father,  I  will  live,  I  will  obey  you,"  the  youth 
replied. 

"If  you  wish  to  make  my  death  as  happy  as 
Fanny  has  made  my  life,  swear  to  marry." 

"1  promise,  father." 

It  was  a  touching  spectacle  to  see  Calyste,  or  his 
ghost  rather,  leaning  on  the  old  Chevalier  du  Halga 
— a  spectre  leading  a  ghost — following  the  baron's 
coffin  and  carrying  the  pall.  The  church  and  the 
little  square  in  front  were  filled  with  people  who 
had  come  from  ten  leagues  around. 

The  baroness  and  Zephirine  were  bitterly  grieved 


346  BEATRIX 

when  they  saw  that,  despite  his  struggles  to  comply 
with  his  father's  dying  wish,  Calyste  continued  in 
a  stupor  of  evil  augury.  On  the  day  on  which  the 
family  donned  their  mourning,  the  baroness  led  her 
son  to  the  bench  in  the  garden  and  questioned  him. 
Calyste  answered  gently  and  submissively,  but  his 
answers  were  in  a  most  despairing  tone. 

"Mother,"  said  he,  "there  is  no  life  left  in  me: 
the  things  I  eat  do  not  nourish  me,  the  air  as  it 
enters  my  lungs  doesn't  freshen  my  blood ;  the  sun 
seems  cold  to  me,  and  when,  for  you,  it  shines  on  the 
front  of  our  house  as  at  this  moment,  where  you  see 
the  old  carvings  in  a  blaze  of  light,  I  see  indistinct 
shapes  enveloped  in  mist  If  Beatrix  were  here, 
everything  would  become  bright  again.  There  is 
only  one  thing  on  earth  that  has  her  coloring  and 
her  shape,  and  that  is  this  flower  in  these  green 
leaves,"  he  said,  taking  from  his  breast  the  withered 
bouquet  the  marchioness  had  given  him,  and  show- 
ing it  to  his  mother. 

The  baroness  dared  not  ask  him  any  further 
questions,  for  there  was  more  madness  in  his  replies 
than  grief  in  his  silence.  But  Calyste  started  vio- 
lently when  he  saw  Mademoiselle  des  Touches 
through  the  windows.  She  reminded  him  of 
Beatrix.  It  was  to  Camille,  therefore,  that  the 
two  despairing  women  owed  the  first  gleam  of  joy 
that  shone  through  the  darkness  of  their  mourning. 

"Well,  Calyste,"  said  Mademoiselle  des  Touches 
as  she  caught  sight  of  him,  "the  carriage  is  ready 
and  we  will  go  together  and  find  Beatrix;  come!" 


BEATRIX  347 

The  pale,  thin  face  of  the  young  man  in  mourning 
garb  was  instantly  suffused  with  red,  and  a  smile 
lighted  up  his  features. 

"We  will  save  him,"  said  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches  to  the  baroness,  who  pressed  her  hand, 
weeping  for  joy. 

Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  the  baroness  and 
Calyste  started  for  Paris  a  week  after  the  baron's 
death,  leaving  everything  in  charge  of  old  Ze- 
phirine. 

Camille's  affection  for  Calyste  had  led  her  to 
plan  a  most  desirable  future  for  the  poor  child. 
Being  connected  with  the  Grandlieu  family,  the 
ducal  branch  of  which  was  about  to  end  in  five 
daughters,  she  had  written  to  the  Duchesse  de 
Grandlieu,  telling  her  Calyste's  story  and  announc- 
ing her  purpose  to  sell  her  house  on  Rue  du  Mont- 
Blanc,  for  which  certain  speculators  had  offered 
her  two  millions  and  a  half.  Her  man  of  business 
had  purchased  for  her,  in  its  place,  one  of  the 
finest  mansions  on  Rue  de  Bourbon,  for  seven  hun- 
dred thousand  francs.  Of  the  balance  of  the  price 
of  the  Rue  du  Mont-Blanc  property  she  would  set 
aside  one  million  to  redeem  the  Du  Guenic  estates, 
and  would  settle  her  whole  fortune  upon  the  duch- 
ess's five  daughters.  She  was  aware  of  the  plans 
of  the  duke  and  duchess,  who  intended  that  the 
youngest  of  the  five  should  marry  the  Vicomte  de 
Grandlieu,  the  probable  inheritor  of  the  title;  she 
knew  that  Clotilde-Frederique,  the  second,  was  de- 
termined to  remain  single  although  with  no  intention 


348  BEATRIX 

of  becoming  an  abbess  like  the  oldest  sister,  and 
there  remained  only  the  last  but  one,  pretty  Sabine, 
at  this  time  twenty  years  of  age ;  to  her,  she  com- 
mitted the  task  of  curing  Calyste  of  his  passion 
for  Madame  de  Rochefide. 

During  the  journey,  Camille  informed  the  baron- 
ess of  these  arrangements.  The  house  on  Rue  de 
Bourbon,  which  she  intended  to  present  to  Calyste 
in  case  her  projects  were  successful,  was  then  being 
refurnished.  All  three  alighted,  therefore,  at  the 
H6tel  de  Grandlieu,  where  the  baroness  was  re- 
ceived with  all  the  distinction  due  to  the  name  she 
bore  before  marriage  as  well  as  to  her  husband's 
name. 

Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  in  the  most  natural 
way,  advised  Calyste  to  see  the  sights  of  Paris  while 
she  was  trying  to  ascertain  where  Beatrix  was  at 
that  moment,  and  she  abandoned  him  to  the  seduc- 
tions of  every  sort  that  awaited  him  there.  The 
duchess,  her  daughters  and  their  friends  did  the 
honors  of  Paris  to  Calyste  just  as  the  holiday  season 
was  beginning.  The  animation  of  the  capital 
afforded  the  young  Breton  ample  distraction.  He 
detected  some  resemblance  in  point  of  intellect  be- 
tween Madame  de  Rochefide  and  Sabine  de  Grand- 
lieu,  who  was  beyond  question  at  that  time  one  of 
the  loveliest  and  most  charming  young  women  in 
Parisian  society,  and  he  paid  more  attention  to  her 
coquetries  than  any  other  woman  could  have  ob- 
tained from  him.  Sabine  de  Grandlieu  played  her 
part  the  more  effectively  because  she  liked  Calyste. 


BEATRIX  349 

Affairs  progressed  so  rapidly  that,  during  the  win- 
ter of  1837,  the  young  Baron  du  Guenic,  who  had 
recovered  his  youthful  freshness  and  bloom,  listened 
with  no  show  of  repugnance  when  his  mother  re- 
minded him  of  the  promise  made  to  his  dying  father, 
and  suggested  his  marriage  to  Sabine  de  Grandlieu. 
But,  although  he  acknowledged  his  promise,  he  con- 
cealed a  secret  indifference  which  the  baroness  un- 
derstood, and  which  would,  she  hoped,  be  done 
away  with  as  a  result  of  the  joys  of  married  life. 

On  the  day  when  the  Grandlieu  family  and  the 
baroness,  accompanied  on  this  occasion  by  her 
relatives  from  England,  sat  in  conclave  in  the  grand 
salon  of  the  Hotel  de  Grandlieu,  while  Leopold 
Mannequin,  the  family  notary,  explained  the  con- 
tract before  reading  it,  Calyste,  whose  brow  was 
somewhat  clouded,  flatly  refused  to  accept  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches'  benefactions;  he  still  relied 
upon  her  devotion  and  believed  her  to  be  engaged  in 
the  search  for  Beatrix.  At  that  moment,  amid  the 
stupefied  silence  of  both  families,  Sabine  entered, 
dressed  in  such  a  way,  although  she  was  very  dark, 
as  to  remind  Calyste  of  the  Marquise  de  Rochefide, 
and  handed  him  the  following  letter: 


Camille  to  Calyste 

''Before  I  enter  my  novice's  cell,  Calyste,  I  am 
permitted  to  cast  one  last  glance  upon  the  world  I 
am  about  to  leave,  to  enter  upon  the  world  of  prayer. 


350  '    BEATRIX 

That  glance  is  entirely  for  you,  who,  in  these  last 
months,  have  been  all  the  world  to  me.  My  voice 
will  reach  you,  if  I  have  not  erred  in  my  calcula- 
tions, in  the  midst  of  a  ceremony  at  which  it  was 
impossible  for  me  to  assist  On  the  day  that  you 
stand  before  the  altar,  bestowing  your  hand  upon  a 
young  and  charming  girl  who  can  love  you  openly 
in  the  face  of  heaven  and  earth,  I  too  shall  be 
standing  before  an  altar,  in  a  convent  at  Nantes, 
but  betrothed  forever  to  Him  who  never  deceives  or 
betrays.  I  write  this  not  to  sadden  you,  but  to  beg 
you  to  allow  no  false  delicacy  to  interfere  with 
what  I  have  intended  to  do  for  you  ever  since  I  first 
saw  you.  Do  not  dispute  my  dearly  won  right.  If 
love  is  suffering,  indeed  I  have  loved  you  well, 
Calyste ;  but  have  no  remorse ;  the  only  real  pleas- 
ure I  have  enjoyed  in  my  whole  life  I  owe  to  you, 
and  the  sorrows  have  come  from  myself.  Reward 
me,  therefore,  for  all  my  past  sorrow  by  giving  me 
cause  for  everlasting  joy.  Permit  poor  Camille, 
who  is  no  more,  to  count  for  something  in  the 
material  happiness  you  will  enjoy  every  day.  Per- 
mit me,  my  dear,  to  be,  as  it  were,  a  perfume  in 
the  flowers  of  your  life,  to  be  mingled  with  it  for- 
ever without  being  obnoxious  to  you.  I  shall  owe 
to  you,  beyond  question,  the  bliss  of  life  everlast- 
ing; are  you  not  willing  that  1  should  pay  my  debt 
by  the  gift  of  a  little  paltry  wealth.?  Do  you  lack 
generosity  ?  Do  you  not  see  in  this  act  the  last 
falsehood  of  love  disdained  ?  The  world  without  you 
was  nothing  to  me,  Calyste ;  you  have  made  it  the 


BEATRIX  351 

most  ghastly  of  solitudes  to  me,  and  you  have 
brought  Camille  Maupin,  the  sceptic,  the  author  of 
books  and  plays  which  I  propose  solemnly  to  disa- 
vow, you  have  tossed  that  bold,  perverse  creature, 
bound  hand  and  foot,  at  God's  feet.  I  am  to-day 
what  I  should  always  have  been,  an  innocent  child. 
Yes,  I  have  washed  my  robe  in  the  tears  of  repent- 
ance, and  I  shall  go  before  the  altar,  endorsed  by 
an  angel,  by  my  beloved  Calyste !  With  what  joy 
do  I  call  you  by  that  name  which  my  resolution  has 
sanctified !  I  love  you  from  no  selfish  motive,  as  a 
mother  loves  her  son,  as  the  Church  loves  its  chil- 
dren. I  can  pray  for  you  and  yours,  with  no  ad- 
mixture of  any  other  desire  than  a  desire  for  your 
happiness.  If  you  knew  the  sublime  tranquillity  of 
my  present  life,  since  I  have  risen  in  thought  far 
above  all  petty  worldly  interests,  and  how  sweet  is 
the  consciousness  of  having  done  one's  duty,  ac- 
cording to  your  noble  device, — you  would  enter  with 
firm  step  into  the  happy  life  that  awaits  you,  with- 
out a  glance  behind  or  about  you !  I  write  you  there- 
fore more  especially  to  entreat  you  to  be  faithful  to 
yourself  and  your  friends.  My  dear,  the  society  in 
which  your  life  is  to  be  passed  could  not  exist  with- 
out the  religion  of  duty,  and  you  would  slight  it,  as 
I  slighted  it,  by  abandoning  yourself  to  passion  and 
caprice,  as  I  did.  Woman  is  equal  to  man  only 
when  she  makes  of  her  life  a  constant  sacrifice,  as 
man's  life  is  perpetual  action.  But  my  life  has 
been  one  long  carnival  of  selfishness.  And  so  it 
may  be  that  God  placed  you  at  my  gate,  toward 


352  BEATRIX 

evening,  as  a  messenger  commissioned  to  punish 
and  to  pardon  me.  Listen  to  this  confession  from  a 
woman  to  whom  glory  has  been  like  a  beacon  light 
whose  beams  pointed  out  to  her  the  true  path.  Be 
great,  sacrifice  your  fantasy  to  your  duties  as  head 
of  a  family,  as  husband  and  father!  Raise  the 
lowered  banner  of  the  Du  Guenics,  exhibit,  in  this 
unbelieving,  unprincipled  age,  the  nobleman  of  old 
time  in  all  his  glory  and  all  his  splendor.  Dear 
child  of  my  heart,  let  me  play  the  part  of  a  mother 
somewhat;  the  adorable  Fanny  will  not  be  jealous 
of  a  woman  dead  to  the  world,  of  whom  henceforth 
you  will  see  naught  but  the  hands  raised  in  prayer 
to  Heaven.  To-day  the  nobility  is  more  than  ever 
in  need  of  resources;  therefore  accept  a  part  of 
mine,  Calyste,  and  make  a  worthy  use  of  it.  It  is 
not  a  gift,  it  is  a  trust.  I  have  thought  more  of 
your  children  and  your  old  Breton  family  than  of 
yourself,  in  offering  you  the  profit  that  time  has 
brought  me  upon  my  property  in  Paris." 

"Let  us  sign,"  said  the  young  man,  to  the  un- 
bounded satisfaction  of  the  assemblage. 


PART  THIRD 
Retrospective  Infidelity 


The  following  week,  after  the  wedding  mass, 
which,  according  to  the  custom  that  prevails  among 
certain  families  in  Faubourg  Saint-Germain,  was 
celebrated  at  seven  in  the  morning  at  the  church 
of  Saint-Thomas  d'Aquin,  Calyste  and  Sabine 
entered  a  pretty  traveling  carriage  amid  the 
embraces  and  good  wishes  and  tears  of  a  score  of 
persons  assembled  under  the  awning  at  the  Hotel  de 
Grandlieu.  The  good  wishes  proceeded  from  the 
four  witnesses  and  the  men,  the  tears  stood  in  the 
eyes  of  the  Duchesse  de  Grandlieu  and  her  daugh- 
ter Clotilde,  both  of  whom  were  agitated  by  the 
same  anxious  thought 

"Poor  Sabine!  she  has  started  out  in  life  at  the 
mercy  of  a  man  who  has  not  acted  altogether  of  his 
own  free  will." 

Marriage  does  not  consist  entirely  of  pleasure, 
which  is  as  fleeting  in  that  state  as  in  every  other ; 
it  implies  compatibility  of  temper,  physical  sym- 
pathies, harmony  of  character,  which  make  of  this 
23  (353) 


354  BEATRIX 

social  necessity  a  never-ending  problem.  Marriage- 
able girls  know  as  well  as  their  mothers  the  condi- 
tions and  risks  of  this  lottery;  that  is  why  women 
weep  at  weddings,  while  men  smile;  the  men  be- 
lieve they  are  risking  nothing,  the  women  know 
almost  exactly  what  they  risk.  In  another  carriage, 
preceding  that  of  the  young  couple,  was  the  Baronne 
du  Guenic,  to  whom  the  duchess  had  said  a  moment 
before : 

"You  are  a  mother,  although  you  have  had  but 
one  son;  try  to  take  my  place  with  my  dear 
Sabine!" 

On  the  box  seat  of  the  carriage  was  a  chasseur 
acting  as  a  courier,  and  on  the  raised  seat  behind 
were  two  maids.  The  four  postilions — for  each  car- 
riage was  drawn  by  four  horses — were  dressed  in 
their  finest  uniforms;  they  all  wore  flowers  at  their 
buttonholes  and  ribbons  in  their  hats,  which  the 
Due  de  Grandlieu  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in 
inducing  them  to  remove,  even  by  paying  them  to 
do  it  The  French  postilion  is  eminently  intelligent, 
but  he  must  have  his  little  joke;  they  took  the 
money  and  at  the  barrier  donned  their  ribbons 
again. 

"Adieu,  Sabine!"  said  the  duchess;  "remember 
your  promise,  and  write  often. — Calyste,  I  will  say 
nothing  more  to  you,  but  you  understand  me!" 

Clotilde,  leaning  upon  her  youngest  sister, 
Athena'is,  upon  whom  Vicomte  Juste  de  Grandlieu 
was  smiling  sweetly,  gazed  earnestly  at  the  bride 
through  her  tears,  and  followed  the  carriage  with 


BEATRIX  355 

her  eyes  until  it  disappeared  amid  the  repeated 
cracking  of  four  whips,  which  made  more  noise  than 
pistol  shots.  In  a  few  seconds,  the  procession 
reached  the  Esplanade  des  Invalides,  traversed  the 
Quai  and  crossed  the  Pont  d'lena,  to  the  Barri^re 
de  Passy,  and  drove  along  the  Versailles  road  to 
the  high  road  to  Bretagne. 

Is  it  not  strange,  to  say  the  least,  that  the  me- 
chanics of  Switzerland  and  Germany  and  the  great 
families  of  France  and  England  follow  the  same 
custom  of  taking  a  journey  after  the  wedding  cere- 
mony ?  The  grandees  make  themselves  comfortable 
in  a  rolling  box.  The  plebeians  travel  gayly  along 
the  roads,  halt  in  the  woods,  feast  at  all  the  inns, 
as  long  as  their  holiday,  or  rather  their  money,  lasts. 
The  moralist  would  be  sorely  embarrassed  to  decide 
which  is  the  more  attractive  form  of  modesty ;  that 
which  hides  from  the  public  gaze,  inaugurating  the 
domestic  fireside  and  the  marriage  bed  at  once  as  do 
good  bourgeois  folk,  or  that  which  hides  from  the 
family,  exhibiting  itself  in  broad  daylight,  on  the 
high  road,  to  the  gaze  of  strangers.  Refined  souls 
should  desire  solitude  and  avoid  the  world  and  the 
family  alike.  The  swift  passion  which  begins 
married  life  is  a  diamond,  a  pearl,  a  jewel  carved 
by  the  first  of  artists,  a  treasure  to  be  buried  at  the 
bottom  of  the  heart 

Who  can  describe  a  honeymoon  unless  it  be  the 
bride  ?  And  how  many  women  realize  that  that  season 
of  uncertain  duration — there  are  those  that  last 
but  a  single  night! — is  the  preface  to  conjugal  life.? 


356  BEATRIX 

Sabine's  first  three  letters  to  her  mother  betrayed  a 
condition  of  affairs  which,  unfortunately,  will  not 
seem  strange  to  some  young  brides  and  to  many  old 
women.  All  those  who  find  themselves  in  the  posi- 
tion of  nurse  of  a  heart,  so  to  speak,  do  not  discover 
it  at  once,  as  Sabine  did.  But  the  young  girls  of 
Faubourg  Saint-Germain,  when  they  are  intellect- 
ually clever,  are  already  women  so  far  as  their 
brains  are  concerned.  Before  marriage,  they  have 
received  the  baptism  of  good  manners  from  the  world 
and  from  their  mothers.  Duchesses,  eager  to  hand 
down  their  own  traditions,  often  do  not  realize  the 
full  bearing  of  their  lessons  when  they  say  to  their 
daughters:  "Such  and  such  a  gesture  is  not  in  good 
taste. — Don't  laugh  at  that. — We  don't  throw  our- 
selves on  a  couch,  but  fall  gracefully  upon  it. — Give 
up  that  horrible  trick  of  yours! — You  mustn't  do 
that,  my  dear,"  etc.,  etc. 

Because  of  such  precepts,  bourgeois  critics  have 
denied  the  possession  of  innocence  and  virtue  to 
young  girls  who,  like  Sabine,  are  simply  virgins 
made  perfect  by  intellect,  by  familiarity  with  grand 
manners  and  by  good  taste ;  and  who,  from  the  age 
of  sixteen,  know  how  to  make  the  most  of  their 
figures.  Sabine,  in  order  to  have  entered  into  the 
plan  formed  by  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  to  give 
her  a  husband,  must  have  belonged  to  the  school  of 
Mademoiselle  de  Chaulieu.  This  innate  shrewd- 
ness, these  bequests  of  race  will  perhaps  make  this 
young  woman  as  interesting  as  the  heroine  of  the 
Memoirs  of  Two  Young  Wives,  when  we  discern  the 


BEATRIX  357 

uselessness  of  these  social  advantages  in  the  great 
crises  of  married  life,  in  which  they  are  often 
crushed  beneath  the  twofold  weight  of  misfortune 
and  passion. 

I 

To  Madame  la  Duchesse  de  Grandlieu 

"Guerande,  April,  1838. 
"Dear  Mother: 

"You  will  understand  why  I  didn't  write  to  you 
en  voyage^  for  our  minds  at  such  times  are  like 
wheels.  Here  I  have  been  for  two  days,  in  the 
heart  of  Bretagne,  at  the  Hotel  du  Guenic,  a  house 
decorated  like  a  box  of  cocoanut  wood.  Not- 
withstanding the  affectionate  attentions  of  Calyste's 
family,  I  feel  an  ardent  longing  to  fly  away  to  you 
and  tell  you  a  multitude  of  those  things  which,  I 
feel  instinctively,  can  be  entrusted  only  to  a  mother. 
Calyste  married,  dear  mamma,  with  a  great  sorrow 
still  alive  in  his  heart;  we  all  knew  it,  and  you  did 
not  conceal  from  me  the  difificulties  that  lay  in  my 
path ;  but  alas !  they  are  greater  than  you  supposed. 
Ah!  dear  mamma,  what  an  amount  of  experience 
we  acquire  in  a  few  days,  why  should  I  not  say  in 
a  few  hours.'  All  your  suggestions  have  proved 
useless,  and  you  will  understand  why  from  this 
single  sentence :  I  love  Calyste  as  if  he  were  not 
my  husband.  That  is  to  say,  if  I  were  married  to 
another  man  I  would  go  with  Calyste,  I  would  love 


358  BEATRIX 

him  and  hate  my  husband.  Assume  therefore  a 
man  loved  utterly,  involuntarily,  absolutely,  to  say 
nothing  of  all  the  other  adverbs  you  may  choose  to 
add.  Thus  my  servitude  is  an  established  fact, 
despite  your  good  advice.  You  bade  me  maintain  a 
noble,  dignified  and  proud  demeanor,  in  order  to 
compel  from  Calyste  sentiments  that  would  be  sub- 
ject to  no  change  in  our  circumstances :  the  esteem, 
the  consideration  which  should  sanctify  a  woman 
in  the  bosom  of  her  family.  You  raised  your  voice, 
justly  I  have  no  doubt,  against  the  young  women  of 
to-day,  who,  under  the  pretext  of  living  on  good 
terms  with  their  husbands,  begin  with  easy-going 
complaisance,  good-humor,  familiarity  and  a  free 
and  easy  bearing,  which  are,  so  you  said,  a  little 
too  courtesan-like — a  word  which  1  confess  I  do  not 
yet  understand,  but  we  shall  see  later — and  which, 
if  I  am  to  take  your  word,  are  so  many  relay  stations 
to  enable  one  to  arrive  rapidly  at  indifference,  and 
perhaps  contempt 

**  'Remember  that  you're  a  Grandlieu !'  you  whis- 
pered in  my  ear. 

"These  suggestions,  overflowing  with  the  mater- 
nal eloquence  of  Daedalus,  had  the  fate  of  all  myth- 
ological things.  My  dear,  dear  mother,  could  you 
imagine  that  I  should  begin  with  the  same  catas- 
trophe that,  according  to  you,  concludes  the  honey- 
moon of  most  young  women  of  the  present  day  ? 

"When  Calyste  and  I  found  ourselves  alone  in  the 
carriage,  we  were  equally  idiotic  in  our  behavior, 
realizing  all  the  importance  of  a  first  word,  a  first 


BEATRIX  359 

look,  and  each  of  us,  abashed  by  the  sacramental 
words,  stared  out  of  the  window.  It  was  so  absurd 
that,  as  we  approached  the  barrier,  monsieur,  in  a 
rather  uncertain  voice,  delivered  a  speech, — pre- 
pared beforehand  no  doubt,  like  all  improvisations, 
— to  which  1  listened  with  wildly  beating  heart, 
and  of  which  I  take  the  liberty  of  giving  you  an 
abstract 

"  'My  dear  Sabine,  I  wish  you  to  be  happy  and 
above  all  things,  I  wish  you  to  be  happy  in  your 
own  way,'  he  said.  'And  so,  in  our  present  situa- 
tion, instead  of  mutually  deceiving  each  other  as  to 
our  characters  and  our  sentiments  by  well-meant 
complaisance,  let  us  both  be  what  we  should  be  a 
few  years  hence.  Imagine  that  you  have  a  brother 
in  me,  as  I  propose  to  see  a  sister  in  you.' 

"Although  it  was  not  lacking  in  delicacy,  I  found 
nothing  in  this  first  speech  inspired  by  conjugal 
affection,  which  responded  to  the  yearnings  of  my 
heart,  and  I  maintained  my  pensive  demeanor  after 
replying  that  I  was  actuated  by  the  same  sentiments. 
Upon  this  declaration  of  our  right  to  be  cold  to  each 
other,  we  talked  about  the  weather,  the  dust,  the 
relays  and  the  landscape,  as  sweetly  as  you  can 
imagine,  I,  laughing  a  forced  laugh,  he,  very 
thoughtful. 

"At  last,  as  we  drove  out  of  Versailles,  I  asked 
Calyste  frankly — I  called  him  my  dear  Calyste  as  he 
called  me  my  dear  Sabine — if  he  could  tell  me  the 
story  of  the  events  that  had  brought  him  within  two 
fingers'  breadth  of  death,  and  to  which  I  knew  that 


36o  BEATRIX 

I  owed  the  good-fortune  to  be  his  wife.  He  hesi- 
tated for  a  long  time.  It  was  the  subject  of  a  little 
discussion  between  us  that  lasted  during  three  re- 
lays, I,  trying  to  pose  as  a  self-willed  damsel,  deter- 
mined to  be  sulky;  he,  meditating  upon  the  fatal 
question  propounded  by  the  newspapers  to  Charles 
X.  like  a  challenge:  JVill  the  king  yield?  At  last, 
after  we  had  changed  horses  at  Verneuil  and  I  had 
taken  oaths  enough  to  satisfy  three  dynasties,  never 
to  reproach  him  with  his  madness,  not  to  treat  him 
coldly,  etc.,  he  described  his  passion  for  Madame  de 
Rochefide. 

*"I  do  not  wish  that  there  should  be  any  secrets 
between  us, '  he  said,  as  he  concluded. 

"Doesn't  poor,  dear  Calyste  know,  I  wonder,  that 
both  his  friend  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  and  you 
were  obliged  to  tell  me  everything,  for  a  young 
woman  of  my  disposition  doesn't  put  on  her  costume 
the  day  of  the  signing  of  the  contract  without  being 
thoroughly  posted  as  to  her  r61e.  One  should  con- 
fess everything  to  such  an  affectionate  mother  as 
you  are  to  me,  and  I  must  say  that  I  was  deeply 
wounded  when  I  saw  that  he  had  yielded  much  less 
to  my  wish  than  to  his  own  longing  to  talk  of  that 
strange  passion.  Do  you  blame  me,  dearest  mother, 
for  having  determined  to  discover  the  extent  of  his 
disappointment,  the  depth  of  that  painful  wound  in 
the  heart  of  which  you  told  me }  So  it  was  that,  a 
week  after  the  conjugal  benediction  was  pronounced 
by  the  cure  of  Saint-Thomas  d'Aquin,  your  Sabine 
found  herself  in  the  decidedly  false  position  of  a 


BEATRIX  361 

young  wife  listening  to  the  story  of  a  thwarted  love, 
and  the  transgressions  of  a  rival,  from  her  husband's 
own  lips!  Yes,  my  part  in  the  drama  was  that  of  a 
young  wife  learning  officially  that  she  owed  her 
marriage  to  the  disdain  of  an  elderly  blonde.  As 
the  result  of  that  narrative  I  gained  what  1  sought! 
'What?'  you  will  ask.  Ah!  dear  mother,  I  have 
seen  enough  Loves  following  one  another  about  upon 
clocks  and  mantelpiece  columns  to  put  my  knowl- 
edge in  practice !  Calyste  terminated  the  poem  of 
his  reminiscences  with  a  most  earnest  asseveration 
that  he  has  entirely  forgotten  what  he  calls  his 
madness.  Every  declaration  requires  a  signature. 
The  happy  wretch  took  my  hand,  put  it  to  his  lips 
and  kept  it  between  his  hands  a  long  while.  A 
declaration  followed.  That  one  seemed  to  me  more 
consistent  with  our  civil  status  than  the  former  one, 
although  our  mouths  did  not  utter  a  single  word.  I 
owe  this  good  fortune  to  my  righteous  indignation 
at  the  wretched  taste  of  a  woman  so  idiotic  as  not 
to  have  loved  my  handsome,  my  fascinating 
Calyste — 

"I  am  summoned  to  play  a  game  of  cards  which  I 
haven't  yet  learned.  I  will  go  on  to-morrow.  To 
be  obliged  to  leave  you  at  such  a  time,  to  make  a 
fifth  at  a  game  of  mouche — such  a  thing  would  not 
be  possible  except  in  the  wilds  of  Bretagne! 

"May. 
"I  resume  the  thread  of  my  Odyssey.    The  third 
day  your  children  laid  aside  the  ceremonious^ow  for 


362  BEATRIX 

the  lovers*  thou.  My  mother-in-law,  overjoyed  to 
see  us  so  happy  together,  has  tried  to  put  herself  in 
your  place,  and  dear  mother,  as  always  happens  with 
those  who  play  a  part  actuated  by  the  desire  to  efface 
reminiscences,  she  has  been  so  lovely  that  she  has 
been  almost  like  you  to  me.  She  has  divined  the 
heroism  of  my  conduct,  i  have  no  doubt,  for,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  journey,  she  concealed  her  uneasi- 
ness too  carefully  not  to  make  it  apparent  by  the 
very  excess  of  her  precautions. 

"When  I  saw  the  towers  of  Guerande  rising  before 
me,  I  said  in  your  son-in-law's  ear: 

**  'Have  you  really  forgotten  her?' 

"My  husband,  who  has  become  my  angel, 
evidently  knows  nothing  of  the  boundless  wealth 
of  sincere  and  unaffected  attachment,  for  that 
little  phrase  made  him  almost  mad  with  joy.  Un- 
fortunately, the  desire  to  make  him  forget  Madame 
de  Rochefide  carried  me  too  far.  But  what  would 
you  have.?  I  am  in  love,  and  I  am  almost  a 
Portuguese,  for  I  resemble  you  more  than  I  do 
my  father.  Calyste  accepted  everything  from 
me,  as  spoiled  children  do— he  is  an  only  son,  you 
know.  Between  ourselves,  I  will  never  give  my 
daughter,  if  I  have  a  daughter,  to  an  only  son.  It 
is  bad  enough  to  put  yourself  in  the  hands  of  a 
tyrant,  and  I  see  tyrants  of  several  sorts  in  an  only 
son.  Thus,  you  see,  we  have  exchanged  roles;  I 
have  borne  myself  like  a  devoted  wife.  There  are 
risks  in  a  devotion  of  which  one  takes  advantage; 
you  may  lose  your  dignity  therein.     I  announce  to 


BEATRIX  363 

you  therefore  the  shipwreck  of  that  semi-virtue. 
Dignity  is  only  a  screen  set  up  by  pride,  behind 
which  we  rave  and  fume  at  our  ease.  What  do  you 
expect,  mamma ! — you  were  not  here,  I  found  my- 
self standing  on  the  brink  of  a  precipice.  If  I  had 
clung  to  my  dignity,  I  should  have  had  the  freezing 
pain  of  a  sort  of  brotherly  affection  which  would  in- 
evitably have  become  indifference  pure  and  simple. 
And  what  sort  of  a  future  should  I  have  laid  up  for 
myself!  My  devotion  has  resulted  in  making  me 
Calyste's  slave.  Shall  I  retreat  from  this  situation  ? 
We  will  see;  for  the  present,  1  enjoy  it.  I  love 
Calyste,  I  love  him  absolutely,  with  the  intense 
affection  of  a  mother  who  approves  whatever  her 
son  does,  even  when  she  is  treated  a  little  harshly 
by  him. 

"15th  May. 
"Thus  far,  dear  mamma,  marriage  has  appeared 
to  me  in  most  charming  guise.  I  am  lavishing  all 
my  affection  upon  the  dearest  of  men,  whom  a  fool 
cast  aside  for  a  paltry  musician — for  that  woman  is 
evidently  a  fool  and  a  cold-blooded  fool,  which  is 
the  very  worst  variety  of  fool.  I  am  charitable  in 
my  legitimate  passion — 1  cure  wounds  by  making 
for  myself  incurable  ones.  Yes,  the  more  dearly  I 
love  Calyste,  the  more  certain  I  feel  that  I  should 
die  of  grief  if  our  present  happiness  should  cease. 
Moreover,  I  am  an  object  of  adoration  to  the  whole 
family  and  the  little  circle  of  friends  who  assemble  at 
the  Hotel  du  Guenic, — all  of  them  personages  born  in 
high  warp  tapestries,  who  have  stepped  out  from 


364  BEATRIX 

them  to  prove  that  the  impossible  exists.  Some  day 
when  I  am  alone,  I  will  describe  my  Aunt  Zephirine 
to  you,  and  Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel,  the  Cheva- 
lier du  Halga,  Mesdemoiselles  de  Kergarouet,  etc. 
Everyone,  even  to  the  two  servants,  Gasselin  and 
Mariotte,  whom  I  hope  to  be  permitted  to  bring 
with  me  to  Paris,  and  who  look  upon  me  as  an  angel 
descended  from  her  place  in  Heaven,  and  start  when- 
ever I  speak  to  them — everyone,  I  say,  is  a  figure 
fit  to  be  put  under  glass. 

"My  mother-in-law  has  solemnly  installed  us  in 
the  apartments  formerly  occupied  by  herself  and 
her  late  husband.     It  was  a  touching  scene. 

**  *I  lived  happily  in  these  rooms  all  my  married 
life,*  she  said  to  us;  'may  that  fact  be  of  happy 
omen  for  you,  my  dear  children !' 

"She  took  Calyste's  room  for  herself.  The 
saintly  creature  seemed  determined  to  deprive  her- 
self of  the  memories  of  her  own  beautiful  conjugal 
life  in  order  to  invest  us  with  them.  The  province 
of  Bretagne,  this  town,  this  old-fashioned  family, 
notwithstanding  the  absurdities  which  exist  only  in 
the  eyes  of  us  mocking  Parisians,  have  an  inexplic- 
able grandeur  in  the  most  trifling  details  of  their 
existence  which  can  be  described  only  by  the  word 
sacred.  All  the  tenants  on  the  vast  domains  of  the 
DuGuenic  family,  which  were  redeemed,  you  know, 
by  Mademoiselle  des  Touches,  whom  we  are  going 
to  visit  at  her  convent,  came  in  a  body  to  welcome 
us.  The  good  people,  in  holiday  attire,  all  express- 
ing the  liveliest  satisfaction  to  know  that  Calyste 


BEATRIX  365 

was  once  more  really  their  master,  gave  me  a  vivid 
idea  of  Bretagne,  of  the  feudal  system  and  of  old 
France.  It  was  an  occasion  which  I  will  not  try  to 
describe  to  you  in  a  letter;  I  will  tell  you  about  it. 
The  terms  of  all  the  leases  are  proposed  by  these 
gars  themselves  and  we  shall  sign  them  after  the 
inspection  we  shall  soon  make  of  our  estates,  which 
have  been  in  pawn  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
past! — Mademoiselle  de  Pen-Hoel  told  us  that  the 
gars  had  accounted  for  the  income  with  an  accuracy 
that  Parisian  business  men  would  refuse  to  credit 
We  shall  set  out  three  days  hence,  and  travel  on 
horseback.  I  will  write  you  when  we  return,  dear 
mother;  but  what  can  I  say  to  you  then,  if  my 
happiness  is  at  its  height  now?  I  will  write  you 
what  you  already  know — how  dearly  I  love  you." 

II 

THE  Same  to  the  Same 

"Nantes,  June. 
"After  playing  the  part  of  a  chatelaine  adored  by 
her  vassals,  as  if  the  Revolutions  of  1789  and  1830 
had  trailed  no  banners  in  the  dust;  after  riding- 
parties  in  the  forest,  halts  at  farmhouses,  dinners 
upon  ancient  tables  and  linen  centuries  old,  bend- 
ing under  Homeric  dishes  served  in  antediluvian 
plate ;  after  drinking  exquisite  wines  in  such  goblets 
as  sleight-of-hand  performers  use,  with  salvos  of 
musketry  at  dessert!   and  cries  of  Vivent  les  Du 


366  BEATRIX 

Guenic!  to  deafen  one!  and  balls  at  which  the  or- 
chestra consists  of  one  biniou,  into  which  a  man 
blows  ten  hours  at  a  stretch!  and  bouquets!  and 
young  brides  who  come  to  ask  our  blessing!  and 
wholesome  fatigue,  the  remedy  for  which  is  found 
in  bed  in  such  sleep  as  I  knew  nothing  of,  and  de- 
licious dreams  in  which  love  is  as  radiant  as  the 
sun  that  shines  upon  you  and  sparkles  upon  in- 
numerable flies  buzzing  in  low  Breton! — and,  lastly, 
after  a  most  entertaining  sojourn  at  the  Chateau  du 
Guenic, — where  the  windows  are  porte-cocheres  and 
where  the  cows  might  graze  upon  the  grass  that 
grows  in  the  great  halls,  but  which  we  have  sworn 
to  restore  and  put  in  order,  intending  to  come  here 
every  year  amid  the  acclamations  of  the  gars  of  the 
Clan  du  Guenic,  one  of  whom  will  bear  our  banner, 
— presto !  here  I  am  at  Nantes ! 

"Ah!  what  a  day  was  that  of  our  arrival  at  Le 
Guenic!  The  rector  came  with  all  his  clergy, 
all  crowned  with  flowers,  to  welcome  us  and  bless 
us,  mother,  expressing  such  joy ! — the  tears  come  to 
my  eyes  as  I  write  of  it  And  dear,  proud  Calyste 
played  his  part  as  seigneur,  like  one  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  characters.  Monsieur  received  their  homage 
as  if  we  were  in  the  thirteenth  century.  I  heard 
the  girls  and  women  saying: 

"  'What  a  pretty  lord  we  have!'  like  the  chorus 
in  a  comic  opera. 

"The  older  men  discussed  among  themselves 
Calyste's  resemblance  to  the  Du  Guenics  whom  they 
had  known.    Ah  1  this  noble,  sublime  Bretagne,  what 


BEATRIX  367 

a  land  of  faith  and  religion !  But  progress  has  its  eye 
on  it,  roads  and  bridges  are  being  built;  the  march 
of  ideas  will  follow,  and  then,  adieu  to  the  sublime! 
The  peasants  will  certainly  never  be  so  free  or  so 
proud  as  I  have  seen  them,  after  it  has  been  proved 
to  them  that  they  are  Calyste's  equals,  if  indeed 
they  can  be  induced  to  believe  it  After  the  con- 
clusion of  the  poem  of  this  pacific  restoration  and 
the  signing  of  the  contracts,  we  left  that  fascinating 
country,  always  bright  with  flowers,  and  gay,  de- 
pressing and  desolate  by  turns,  and  came  here  to 
kneel  at  the  feet  of  her  to  whom  we  owe  our  happi- 
ness. Calyste  and  I  both  felt  that  we  must  express 
our  gratitude  to  the  Sister  of  the  Convent  of  the 
Visitation.  In  memory  of  her,  he  will  quarter  his 
arms  with  those  of  the  Des  Touches,  which  are: 
parti  coupe,  tranche,  taille  d'or  et  de  sinople.  He 
will  take  one  of  the  silver  eagles  for  one  of  his  sup- 
porters, and  will  put  in  its  beak  the  appropriate 
woman's  motto:    Remember! 

"Well,  we  went  yesterday  to  the  Convent  of  the 
Visitation,  under  the  guidance  of  Abbe  Grimont,  a 
friend  of  the  Du  Guenic  family,  who  told  us  that 
our  dear  Felicite  is  a  saint,  mamma;  she  cannot 
well  be  anything  less  than  that  in  his  eyes,  as  that 
illustrious  conversion  procured  him  the  appointment 
of  vicar-general  of  the  diocese.  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches  refused  to  receive  Calyste  and  saw  me 
alone.  I  found  her  somewhat  changed,  paler  and 
thinner ;  she  seemed  to  me  to  be  very  glad  that  I 
had  come. 


368  BEATRIX 

"  'Tell  Calyste,'  she  said  in  a  low  voice,  'that  my 
refusal  to  see  him  is  a  matter  of  conscience  with  me, 
for  I  have  been  given  permission;  but  I  prefer  not 
to  purchase  a  few  moments'  joy  by  months  of  suffer- 
ing. Ah !  if  you  knew  how  hard  it  is  for  me  to 
reply  when  I  am  asked:  "What  are  you  thinking 
about?"  The  mistress  of  the  novices  cannot  under- 
stand the  extent  and  number  of  the  thoughts  that 
pass  through  my  head  like  whirlwinds.  At  times  I 
seem  to  see  Italy  again  and  Paris,  with  all  their 
wonderful  sights,  when  I  think  of  Calyste,  who,' 
she  said  in  that  beautiful,  poetic  vein,  which  you 
remember,  'is  the  sun  of  my  memory. — I  was  too 
old  to  be  received  at  the  Carmelites  and  1  joined 
the  order  of  Saint  Frangois  de  Sales  simply  because 
it  was  he  who  said:  "I  will  uncover  your  heads 
instead  of  uncovering  your  feet!"  refusing  his  sanc- 
tion to  the  harsh  penances  that  shatter  the  body. 
It  is,  in  truth,  the  head  that  sins.  The  saintly 
bishop  did  well,  therefore,  to  make  his  regulations 
severe  upon  the  intelligence,  and  terribly  effective 
in  curbing  the  will ! — That  is  what  I  desired,  for  my 
head  is  the  real  culprit;  it  deceived  me  concerning 
my  heart,  up  to  the  fatal  age  of  forty,  at  which, 
although  one  may  be  for  a  few  minutes  forty  times 
happier  than  young  women,  one  is  sure  to  be  later 
fifty  times  unhappier  than  they. — Well,  my  child, 
are  you  satisfied.^*  she  asked  me,  with  visible 
relief  at  ceasing  to  speak  of  herself. 

"  'You  see  me  in  the  enchantment  stage  of  love 
and  happiness,'  I  replied. 


FROM  SABINE  TO  HER  MOTHER 


''After  playing  tlic  part  of  a  chatelaine  adored  by 
her  vassals,  as  if  the  Revolutions  of  ijSg  and  i8jo 
had  trailed  no  banners  in  the  dust;  *  *  * 
after  drinking  exquisite  ivincs  in  such  goblets  as 
sleight-of-hand  performers  use,  with  salvos  of  mus- 
ketry at  dessert !  and  cries  of  VwexA  les  Du  Giienic! 
to  deafen  one  !  and  balls  at  winch  the  orchestra  con- 
sists of  one  binioLi,  into  zvhich  a  man  blo7vs  ten  hours 
at  a  stretch  I  and  bouquets !  and  young  brides  xvJio 
come  to  ask  our  blessing ! 


4f.f*^jUU  ^13%  tf  4  3i.  fcC 


^rM-MORfMJ 


BEATRIX  369 

'*  'Calyste  is  as  artless  and  kind  as  he  is  noble 
and  handsome,'  said  she,  gravely.  'I  have  made 
him  my  heir ;  in  addition  to  my  fortune,  you  possess 
the  twofold  ideal  of  which  I  dreamed. — I  applaud 
myself  for  what  I  have  done,'  she  continued  after  a 
pause.  'Now,  my  child,  don't  deceive  yourself. 
You  have  laid  hold  of  happiness  very  easily,  for 
you  had  only  to  put  out  your  hand,  but  you  must 
think  about  retaining  your  hold  upon  it  If  you  had 
come  here  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  take  counsel 
of  my  experience,  your  voyage  would  be  amply  re- 
paid. Calyste  is  actuated  at  this  moment  by  a 
passion  communicated,  but  not  inspired,  by  you. 
To  make  your  felicity  lasting,  try,  my  dear  girl,  to 
combine  the  two.  In  the  interest  of  both,  try  to  be 
capricious,  be  coquettish  with  him  and  a  little  cruel 
— you  must  do  it  I  do  not  advise  hateful  scheming, 
nor  tyranny,  but  skilful  handling.  Between 
miserliness  and  wasteful  extravagance,  my  dear, 
there  is  economy.  Strive  to  acquire  a  little  real 
influence  over  Calyste  by  honorable  means.  These 
are  the  last  words  upon  earthly  matters  that  I  shall 
utter ;  I  kept  them  in  reserve  for  you,  for  I  trembled 
in  my  conscience  lest  I  had  sacrificed  you  to  save 
Calyste;  bind  him  fast  to  you,  see  that  he  has  chil- 
dren and  that  he  respects  their  mother  in  you. — 
Lastly,'  she  said,  in  a  voice  that  betrayed  deep 
emotion,  'never  let  him  see  Beatrix  again!' 

"That  name  plunged  us  both  into  a  sort  of  torpor, 
and  we  sat  gazing  into  each  other's  eyes  with  the 
same  expression  of  vague  disquietude. 
24 


370  BEATRIX 

**  'Are  you  going  back  to  Guerande?'  she  asked 
me. 

"'Yes,'  I  said. 

"  'Well,  never  go  to  Les  Touches.  I  did  wrong 
to  give  you  that  property. ' 

'"Why,  pray?' 

"  'Child !  so  far  as  you  are  concerned,  Les  Touches 
is  Bluebeard's  closet,  for  there  is  nothing  more  dan- 
gerous than  to  arouse  a  sleeping  passion. ' 

"I  have  given  you  the  substance  of  our  conversa- 
tion, dear  mother.  If  Mademoiselle  des  Touches 
made  me  talk  a  great  deal,  her  words  gave  me  the 
more  food  for  thought,  because  in  the  intoxicating 
excitement  of  the  voyage  and  my  fascination  with 
Calyste,  I  had  forgotten  the  grave  moral  situation  of 
which  I  spoke  in  my  first  letter. 

"After  we  had  thoroughly  admired  Nantes — a 
magnificent  and  most  attractive  city — and  had  been 
to  see  the  spot  on  Place  Bretagne  where  Charette 
fell  so  nobly,  we  planned  to  return  by  the  Loire  to 
Saint-Nazaire,  as  we  had  already  made  the  land 
journey  between  Nantes  and  Guerande.  A  steam- 
boat is  decidedly  less  comfortable  than  a  carriage. 
This  traveling  in  public  is  an  invention  of  the 
modern  monster.  Monopoly.  Two  young  ladies  of 
Nantes, — very  pretty,  they  were, — made  a  great 
commotion  on  deck,  being  afflicted  with  what  I  call 
Kergarouetism — a  little  joke  that  you  will  understand 
when  I  have  described  the  Kergarouets.  Calyste  be- 
haved very  well.  Like  a  true  gentleman  he  didn't 
advertise  me.    Although  I  was  satisfied  with  his  good 


BEATRIX  371 

taste,  like  a  child  who  has  just  been  given  his  first 
drum,  it  occurred  to  me  that  I  had  a  magnificent  op- 
portunity to  try  the  system  recommended  by  Ca- 
mille  Maupin,  for  it  certainly  was  not  the  Sister  of 
the  Visitation  who  gave  me  that  advice.  1  assumed 
a  sort  of  petulant  expression  and  Calyste  took  alarm 
thereat  very  prettily.  To  his  whispered  question : 
'What's  the  matter?'  I  answered  truthfully: 
'Nothing!' 

"And  thereupon  I  realized  how  little  success  truth 
obtains  at  first.  Falsehood  is  a  decisive  weapon  in 
emergencies  when  celerity  of  action  is  likely  to  save 
women  and  empires.  Calyste  became  very  urgent, 
very  anxious.  1  led  him  to  the  bow  of  the  boat  and 
sat  down  on  a  pile  of  ropes,  and  there,  in  a  voice 
tremulous  with  fear,  if  not  with  tears,  I  told  him  of 
the  misery  and  dread  that  beset  a  woman  whose 
husband  is  the  handsomest  of  men. 

"*Ah!  Calyste,'  I  cried,  'there  is  one  frightful 
defect  in  our  union;  you  did  not  love  me,  you  did 
not  choose  me!  You  didn't  stand  rooted  in  your 
place  like  a  statue  the  first  time  you  saw  me !  My 
heart,  my  attachment,  my  love  solicit  your  affec- 
tion, and  some  day  you  will  punish  me  for  bringing 
to  you  of  my  own  motion,  the  treasures  of  my  pure, 
involuntary,  maidenly  love!  I  ought  to  be  cruel, 
coquettish,  but  1  have  no  strength  against  you.  If 
that  horrible  creature  who  disdained  you,  were  here 
in  my  place,  you  would  not  have  noticed  those  two 
frightful  Breton  women,  whom  the  customs  officers 
at  the  Paris  barriers  would  class  among  cattle.' 


372  BEATRIX 

"Calyste  had  tears  in  his  eyes,  mother,  and  he 
turned  his  head  away  to  hide  them  from  me;  he 
saw  that  we  were  approaching  Basse  Indre,  and  ran 
to  tell  the  captain  to  land  us  there.  It  is  impossible 
to  hold  out  against  such  replies,  especially  when 
accompanied  by  a  sojourn  of  three  hours  in  a 
wretched  inn  of  Basse  Indre,  where  we  breakfasted 
on  fresh  fish  in  a  small  room  such  as  genre  painters 
love  to  paint,  and  listened  to  the  hum  of  the  forges 
of  Indret  across  the  beautiful  waters  of  the  Loire. 
As  I  saw  the  result  of  the  experiences  of  Experience, 
I  cried: 

**  *Ah!  sweet  Felicite — * 

"Incapable  as  he  was  of  suspecting  the  nun's  ad- 
vice to  me  and  the  duplicity  of  my  conduct,  Calyste 
made  a  divine  play  upon  words ;  he  cut  me  short 
with: 

"'Let  us  not  lose  the  memory  of  it!  We  will 
send  an  artist  to  copy  this  scene. ' 

"I  laughed,  dear  mamma,  to  throw  Calyste  off  the 
scent,  and  I  saw  that  he  was  almost  angry  with  me. 

"  'Why,'  I  said,  'this  landscape,  this  scene  is  in- 
effaceably  engraved  upon  my  heart  in  colors  that  no 
painter  can  equal !' 

"Ah!  mother,  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  assume 
the  appearance  of  war  or  hostility  in  my  love. 
Calyste  will  do  whatever  he  pleases  with  me. 
That  tear  was  the  first,  I  think,  he  ever  bestowed 
upon  me :  is  it  not  of  more  value  than  the  second 
declaration  of  our  mutual  privileges  ? — A  heartless 
woman  would  have  become  queen  and  mistress  after 


BEATRIX  373 

the  scene  on  the  boat,  but  I  threw  away  my  oppor- 
tunities again.  According  to  your  theory,  the  older 
1  grow  the  more  of  a  courtesan  I  become,  for  I  am  a 
woeful  coward  where  happiness  is  concerned,  and  I 
cannot  resist  a  glance  from  my  lord.  No!  I  do  not 
abandon  myself  to  love,  but  1  cling  to  it  as  a  mother 
strains  her  infant  to  her  breast  when  she  fears  some 
disaster." 

Ill 

The  Same  to  the  Same 

"Guerande,  July. 
*'Ah!  dear  mother,  to  think  that  I  have  made  the 
acquaintance  of  jealousy  after  only  three  months! 
My  heart  is  very  full,  for  it  contains  profound 
hatred  and  profound  love!  I  am  worse  than  be- 
trayed, I  am  not  loved! — How  fortunate  I  am  to 
have  a  mother,  a  heart  into  which  I  can  pour  my 
lamentations  as  I  please !  We  wives  who  are  still 
young  girls  to  a  certain  extent,  need  nothing  more 
than  to  have  some  one  say  to  us:  'There  is  one 
key  rusty  with  memories  among  all  the  keys  of 
your  palace;  go  where  you  please,  enjoy  everything 
you  see,  but  beware  of  going  to  Les  Touches !'  noth- 
ing more  than  that  is  necessary  to  send  us  there 
hot-footed,  our  eyes  blazing  with  the  curiosity  of 
Eve.  What  an  irritating  quality  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches  had  introduced  into  my  love!  But  why 
did  she  forbid  me  to  go  to  Les  Touches }    What  is 


374  BEATRIX 

such  happiness  as  mine  that  it  should  depend  upon 
a  walk,  upon  a  visit  to  a  Bretagne  hovel?  And 
what  have  1  to  fear?  In  a  word,  add  to  Madame 
Bluebeard's  arguments  the  desire  that  consumes  all 
wives  to  find  whether  their  happiness  rests  upon  a 
precarious  or  a  solid  foundation,  and  you  will  under- 
stand how  it  came  about  that  I  asked  one  day,  with 
an  indifferent  air: 

**  'What  sort  of  a  place  is  Les  Touches?' 

" 'Les  Touches  is  yours,'  said  my  adorable 
mother-in-law. 

"  'If  only  Calyste  had  never  set  foot  in  Les 
Touches!'  cried  Aunt  Zephirine,  shaking  her  head. 

"  'Why,  then  he  wouldn't  be  my  husband,'  I  said 
to  her. 

"  'Do  you  know  what  happened  there?'  inquired 
my  mother-in-law  with  interest. 

"  'It's  a  place  of  perdition,'  said  Mademoiselle  de 
Pen-Hoel;  'Mademoiselle  des  Touches  committed 
many  sins  there  for  which  she  is  now  seeking  God's 
forgiveness. ' 

"  'Didn't  it  save  that  noble  creature's  soul,  and 
make  the  fortune  of  a  convent?'  cried  the  Chevalier 
du  Halga.  'Abbe  Grimont  told  me  that  she  gave 
the  Sisters  of  the  Visitation  a  hundred  thousand 
francs. ' 

"'Would  you  like  to  go  to  Les  Touches?'  my 
mother-in-law  asked.  'It  is  well  worth  the  trouble 
of  a  visit' 

"  'No,  no!*  I  said,  hastily. 

"Doesn't  this  little  scene  seem  to  you  like  a  page 


BEATRIX  375 

from  some  diabolical  drama?  It  was  renewed  upon 
a  score  of  occasions.  At  last  my  mother-in-law  said 
to  me: 

**  *I  understand  why  you  don't  want  to  go  to  Les 
Touches,  and  you  are  quite  right' 

"Ah!  mother,  you  will  agree  that  that  dagger- 
thrust,  unwittingly  dealt,  would  have  persuaded 
you  to  ascertain  if  your  happiness  rested  upon  such 
insecure  foundations  that  it  was  likely  to  perish 
under  this  or  that  decorated  roof.  I  must  do  Calyste 
the  justice  to  say  that  he  never  suggested  to  me 
to  visit  that  country  house  which  had  so  recently 
become  his  own.  We  become  devoid  of  common- 
sense  as  soon  as  we  fall  in  love;  for  his  silence, 
his  reserve  offended  me,  and  I  said  to  him  one  day : 

"  'What  is  it  that  you  are  afraid  of  seeing  at  Les 
Touches,  pray,  that  only  you  avoid  speaking  of  the 
place  ?' 

*'  *Let  us  go  there,'  he  said. 

"Thereupon  I  was  caught  like  all  women  who 
want  to  be  caught,  and  who  leave  it  to  chance  to 
cut  the  Gordian  knot  of  their  indecision.  We 
went  to  Les  Touches. 

"It  is  a  delightful  place,  arranged  and  furnished 
most  artistically  and  in  the  best  of  taste,  and  I  was 
enchanted  with  the  yawning  abyss  which  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches  had  so  earnestly  forbidden  me 
to  approach.  All  poisonous  flowers  are  charming; 
Satan  sows  them,  for  there  are  flowers  of  Satan  and 
flowers  of  God !  we  have  only  to  search  our  own 
hearts  to  realize  that  each  of  them  created  half  of 


376  BEATRIX 

the  world.  What  painful  pleasure  there  was  in  my 
position,  where  I  was  playing,  not  with  fire,  but 
with  ashes ! — I  watched  Calyste  closely,  for  it  was 
my  purpose  to  discover  whether  the  flame  was  really 
extinct,  and  I  kept  my  eye  on  the  currents  of  air, 
you  may  believe !  1  watched  his  face  as  we  went 
from  room  to  room,  from  chair  to  chair,  exactly  like 
children  hunting  for  a  hidden  object.  Calyste 
seemed  very  thoughtful  but  I  thought  at  first  that  I 
had  won.  I  felt  strong  enough  in  my  position  to 
speak  of  Madame  de  Rochefide,  who,  since  the  ad- 
venture of  the  cliff  at  Le  Croisic,  is  spoken  of  as 
Rocheperfide.  At  last,  we  went  to  see  the  famous 
box-bush  on  which  Beatrix  caught  when  he  pushed 
her  into  the  sea  so  that  she  should  belong  to  no  one 
else. 

"  'She  must  be  very  light  if  that  held  her,'  I  re- 
marked, laughingly. 

"Calyste  said  nothing. 

**  'Let  us  respect  the  dead,'  I  continued. 

"Still  Calyste  was  silent. 

**  'Have  I  offended  you?' 

"'No,  but  do  not  galvanize  that  passion,'  he 
said. 

"What  a  thing  to  say!— When  Calyste  saw  that 
1  was  depressed,  he  redoubled  his  affectionate  atten- 
tions. 

"August 

"I  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  abyss,  alas !  and  I 
amused  myself  plucking  the  flowers  that  grow 
there,  as  injured  innocence  does  in  all  melodramas. 


BEATRIX  377 

Suddenly  a  horrible  thought  rode  roughshod  through 
my  happiness,  like  the  horse  in  the  German  ballad. 
I  fancied  that  I  could  see  that  Calyste's  passion  was 
increased  by  his  memories,  and  that  he  threw  upon 
me  the  storms  that  I  reawakened  in  his  breast  by 
recalling  the  coquetries  of  that  vile  Beatrix!  That 
unhealthy,  cold,  persistent,  flabby  nature,  which 
resembles  the  mollusk  and  the  coral  at  once,  dares  to 
call  itself  Beatrix ! — So  there  I  was,  my  dear  mother, 
compelled  already  to  keep  my  eye  upon  a  suspicion 
when  my  heart  is  all  Calyste's;  and  is  it  not  a  dire 
catastrophe  that  the  eye  should  triumph  over  the 
heart,  that  the  suspicion  should  at  last  be  justified  ? 
This  is  how  it  happened. 

"  'This  place  is  very  dear  to  me, '  I  said  to  Calyste 
one  morning,  'for  to  it  I  owe  my  happiness,  so  I  for- 
give you  for  sometimes  mistaking  me  for  another—* 

"The  loyal  Breton  blushed,  whereupon  I  leaped 
upon  his  neck;  but  I  left  Les  Touches  and  I  will 
never  go  there  again. 

"By  the  bitter  hate  which  makes  me  long  for  Ma- 
dame de  Rochefide's  death — from  natural  causes,  of 
course,  a  hemorrhage  or  an  accident  of  some  sort — I 
realize  the  extent  and  the  power  of  my  love  for 
Calyste.  That  woman  disturbs  my  sleep,  I  see  her 
in  my  dreams;  am  I  destined  to  meet  her,  I  wonder.' 
— Ah!  the  Sister  of  the  Visitation  was  right:  Les 
Touches  is  a  fatal  spot,  Calyste's  impressions  were 
aroused  anew  there  and  they  are  stronger  than  the 
joys  of  our  love.  Find  out  for  me,  my  dear  mother, 
if  Madame  de  Rochefide  is  at  Paris,  for  if  she  is,  I 


378  BEATRIX 

shall  stay  on  our  estates  in  Bretagne.  Poor  Made- 
moiselle des  Touches  is  sorry  now  that  she  made  me 
dress  like  Beatrix  on  the  day  the  contract  was 
signed,  in  order  to  ensure  the  success  of  her  plan ; 
what  would  she  say  if  she  knew  how  far  I  have 
been  taken  for  our  detestable  rival?  Why,  it  is 
downright  prostitution!  I  am  not  myself;  I  am 
ashamed.  I  am  oppressed  by  a  mad  longing  to  fly 
from  Guerande  and  the  sands  of  Le  Croisic. 

"25th  August 
*'I  am  determined  to  return  to  the  ruins  of  Le 
Guenic.  Calyste,  who  is  very  much  troubled  over 
my  trouble,  is  to  take  me  there.  Either  he  has  no 
suspicion  of  the  truth,  in  which  case  he  knows  very 
little  of  the  world,  or,  if  he  knows  the  cause  of  my 
flight,  he  does  not  care  for  me.  I  tremble  so  lest  I 
arrive  at  ghastly  certainty,  if  I  investigate,  that  I 
simply  put  my  hands  over  my  eyes,  as  children  do 
to  avoid  hearing  a  report.  Oh !  mother  dear,  I  am 
not  loved  with  the  same  love  that  I  feel  in  my  heart. 
Calyste  is  charming,  to  be  sure;  but  what  man, 
unless  he  were  a  monster,  could  fail  to  be  as  amiable 
and  gracious  as  Calyste  when  he  receives  all  the 
flowers  that  bloom  in  the  heart  of  a  girl  of  twenty, 
brought  up  by  you,  pure  and  loving  as  I  am,  and 
said  by  many  women  to  be  beautiful — 

**Le  Guenic,  i8th  September. 
"Has  he  forgotten  her?    That  is  the  one  thought 
that  echoes  remorsefully  in  my  heart!     Ah!   dear 


BEATRIX  379 

mamma,  do  all  wives  have  memories  to  contend 
against,  as  I  have?  Only  innocent  young  men 
should  be  married  to  pure  young  girls!  But  it  is  a 
deceptive  Utopia;  it  is  much  better  to  have  one's 
rival  in  the  past  than  in  the  future.  Oh!  pity  me, 
mother,  although  at  this  moment  I  am  happy — as 
happy  as  a  woman  can  be  who  is  afraid  of  losing 
her  happiness  and  clings  to  it  for  dear  life! — That 
is  one  way  of  destroying  it,  the  profound  Clotilde 
once  said. 

"I  notice  that,  for  five  months  past,  I  have 
thought  only  of  myself,  that  is,  of  Calyste. 
Tell  my  sister  Clotilde  that  her  melancholy  words 
of  wisdom  often  recur  to  my  mind;  she  is  very  for- 
tunate in  being  faithful  to  a  dead  man,  for  she  has 
no  rival  to  fear.  I  embrace  dear  Athenais ;  I  see 
that  Juste  is  mad  from  love  of  her.  From  what  you 
tell  me  in  your  last  letter,  he  seems  to  fear  that  you 
won't  give  her  to  him.  Cultivate  that  fear  like  a 
precious  flower.  Athenais  will  be  the  mistress,  and 
I,  who  trembled  with  apprehension  because  I  did  not 
obtain  Calyste  from  his  own  heart,  shall  be  the  ser- 
vant A  thousand  kisses,  dear  mamma.  Ah!  if 
my  terrors  should  prove  to  be  well  founded,  I  shall 
have  paid  dearly  for  Camille  Maupin's  fortune. — 
My  affectionate  respects  to  my  father." 


These  letters  explain  perfectly  the  real  situation 
of  the  husband  and  wife.  Whereas  Sabine  looked 
forward  to  a  marriage  of  love,  Calyste  saw  only  a 
marriage  of  convenience.  In  fact,  the  joys  of  the 
honeymoon  were  not  altogether  in  accord  with  the 
legal  theory  of  the  community  of  goods. 

During  the  residence  of  the  young  couple  in 
Bretagne,  the  work  of  restoring,  rearranging  and  re- 
furnishing the  Hotel  du  Guenic  on  Rue  de  Bourbon, 
was  hurried  forward  by  the  famous  architect  Grindot, 
under  the  superintendence  of  the  Due  and  Duchesse 
de  Grandlieu  and  Clotilde.  All  arrangements  hav- 
ing been  made  for  the  return  of  the  youthful  couple 
to  Paris  in  December,  1838,  Sabine  took  up  her 
abode  on  Rue  de  Bourbon  with  pleasure,  not  so 
much  at  the  thought  of  playing  the  r61e  of  mistress 
of  the  household  as  at  the  prospect  of  ascertaining 
the  family  judgment  concerning  her  marriage. 
Calyste,  the  picture  of  comely  indifference,  gladly 
placed  himself  under  the  guidance,  in  social  matters, 
of  his  sister-in-law  Clotilde  and  his  mother-in-law, 
who  were  grateful  to  him  for  his  passive  submission. 
He  obtained  the  place  in  society  due  to  his  name, 
his  fortune  and  his  marriage.  The  success  of  his 
wife,  who  was  considered  one  of  the  most  charming 
of  women,  the  distractions  of  fashionable  society, 
duties  to  fulfil,  and  the  amusements  in  vogue  in 
(381) 


382  BEATRIX 

Paris  in  winter,  restored  a  little  vigor  to  the  well- 
being  of  the  household,  by  introducing  therein 
stimulants  and  media  at  the  same  time.  Sabine, 
whom  her  mother  and  sister,  seeing  in  Calyste's 
coldness  the  result  of  his  English  education,  con- 
sidered most  fortunate,  laid  aside  her  gloomy 
thoughts;  she  heard  so  many  mismated  young 
women  envying  her  lot  that  she  banished  her  ter- 
rors to  the  land  of  chimeras. 

At  last,  Sabine's  pregnancy  completed  the  guaran- 
ties afforded  by  this  union  of  the  neuter  gender,  so 
to  speak, — one  of  the  sort  from  which  many  experi- 
enced women  augur  good  results.  In  October,  1839, 
the  young  Baronne  du  Guenic  gave  birth  to  a  boy 
and  was  guilty  of  the  folly,  as  women  under  such 
circumstances  consider  it,  of  nursing  him.  How 
can  a  woman  fail  to  perform  the  whole  duty  of  a 
mother,  when  she  has  a  son  by  a  husband  whom 
she  absolutely  idolizes? 

Toward  the  end  of  the  following  summer,  in 
August,  1840,  Sabine  was  approaching  the  time  for 
weaning  her  first  child.  During  a  residence  of  two 
years  in  Paris,  Calyste  had  altogether  emerged  from 
the  state  of  innocence,  whose  prestige  had  embel- 
lished his  early  appearances  in  the  world  of  passion. 
He  had  become  intimate  with  the  young  Due 
Georges  de  Maufrigneuse,  like  himself,  recently 
married  to  an  heiress,  Berthe  deCinq-Cygne;  with 
Vicomte  Savinien  de  Portendu^re,  with  the  Due  and 
Duchesse  de  Rhetore,  the  Due  and  Duchesse  de 
Lenoncourt-Chaulieu,  and  all  the  habitues  of  his 


BEATRIX  383 

mother-in-law's  salon,  and  he  appreciated  the  differ- 
ence between  life  in  the  provinces  and  life  at  Paris. 
Wealth  has  its  gloomy,  dull  moments,  which  Paris 
can  do  more  than  any  other  capital  to  entertain,  to 
charm,  to  interest  By  contact  with  these  young 
husbands  who  leave  the  noblest,  loveliest  creatures 
for  the  delights  of  tobacco  and  whist,  for  the  exalted 
conversation  of  the  club  or  the  preoccupations  of  the 
turf,  many  of  the  domestic  virtues  possessed  by  the 
young  Breton  nobleman  were  assailed.  The  mater- 
nal yearning  of  a  wife  who  is  anxious  not  to  weary 
her  husband  always  comes  to  the  aid  of  the  dissipa- 
tion of  youthful  bridegrooms.  A  woman  is  so  proud 
to  see  a  man  return  to  her  when  she  has  left  him 
perfectly  free! 

One  evening,  in  October  of  that  year,  to  avoid 
the  shrieks  of  an  infant  in  process  of  being  weaned, 
Calyste,  upon  whose  brow  Sabine  could  not,  without 
a  pang,  see  the  wrinkles  gather,  went,  by  her  ad- 
vice, to  the  VarieieSy  where  a  new  play  was  being 
given. 

The  footman  who  was  sent  to  purchase  an  or- 
chestra stall  selected  one  very  near  that  part  of  the 
theatre  called  the  proscenium.  During  the  first  in- 
termission Calyste,  upon  looking  about  him,  saw 
Madame  de  Rochefide  in  one  of  the  proscenium  boxes 
on  the  first  tier,  within  four  paces  of  him. 

Beatrix  in  Paris!  Beatrix  in  public!  those  two 
thoughts  passed  through  Calyste's  heart  like  two 
arrows.  To  see  her  again  after  well-nigh  three 
years!     How  can  we  explain  the  general  upheaval 


384  BEATRIX 

that  takes  place  in  a  lover's  heart,  when,  instead  of 
forgetting,  he  had  sometimes  made  it  so  evident  that 
he  had  married  his  Beatrix  in  his  wife's  person, 
that  his  wife  had  noticed  it !  By  what  can  we  ex- 
plain the  fact  that  the  poem  of  a  lost,  unappreciated 
passion,  but  a  passion  that  was  still  alive  in  the 
heart  of  Sabine's  husband,  rendered  the  young 
wife's  conjugal  devotion  and  ineffable  affection  ob- 
scure therein  ?  Beatrix  at  once  became  light,  sun, 
impulse,  life  and  mystery;  while  Sabine  was  duty, 
darkness,  familiarity.  In  an  instant,  the  one  was 
pleasure,  the  other  ennui.     It  was  a  thunderclap. 

In  his  loyalty,  Sabine's  husband  conceived  the 
noble  purpose  of  leaving  the  theatre.  As  he  left  the 
stalls,  he  saw  that  the  door  of  her  box  was  partly 
open,  and  his  feet  carried  him  thither  in  defiance  of 
his  will.  The  young  Breton  found  Beatrix  sitting 
between  two  of  the  most  distinguished  men  of  the 
time,  Canalis  and  Nathan,  a  politician  and  a  man 
of  letters.  In  the  three  years  since  Calyste  last  saw 
her,  Madame  de  Rochefide  had  changed  tremen- 
dously; but,  although  her  metamorphosis  would 
have  impressed  a  woman,  it  made  her  the  more  at- 
tractive and  poetic  in  Calyste's  eyes.  Up  to  the 
age  of  thirty,  pretty  women  in  Paris  require  nothing 
but  clothes  for  their  toilet;  but,  when  they  pass 
beneath  the  fatal  porch  of  the  thirtieth  year,  they 
seek  weapons,  fascinations,  embellishment  in  the 
way  of  finery ;  they  manufacture  charms,  they  re- 
sort to  all  sorts  of  expedients,  they  adopt  a  certain 
tone,  they  make  themselves  younger,  they  make  a 


BEATRIX  385 

study  of  the  most  trifling  accessories, — in  a  word, 
tiiey  pass  from  nature  to  art 

Madame  de  Rochefide  had  undergone  the  trans- 
formation described  in  the  drama  which,  in  this 
history  of  French  morals  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, is  called  The  Deserted  Mistress.  After  be- 
ing deserted  by  Conti,  she  had  naturally  become 
a  great  artist  in  the  matter  of  toilets,  of  flirtation 
and  of  artificial  flowers  of  all  sorts. 

"How  does  it  happen  that  Conti  isn't  here?" 
Calyste  asked  Canalis  in  a  low  tone,  after  exchang- 
ing the  usual  trite  salutations  with  which  the  most 
solemn  interviews  begin  when  they  take  place  in 
public. 

The  former  great  poet  of  Faubourg  Saint-Germain, 
twice  minister  and  lately  become  for  the  fourth  time 
an  orator  aspiring  to  a  post  in  some  new  ministry, 
significantly  placed  his  finger  on  his  lips.  This 
gesture  explained  everything. 

"I  am  very  glad  to  see  you,"  said  Beatrix  with  a 
feline  smile  to  Calyste.  "I  said  to  myself  as  I  saw 
you  sitting  there,  before  you  saw  me,  that  you  cer- 
tainly would  not  deny  me ! — Ah !  my  Calyste,  why 
did  you  marry?"  she  whispered;  "and  such  a  little 
fool,  too!" 

As  soon  as  a  woman  begins  to  whisper  to  a  new 
arrival  in  her  box  and  bid  him  sit  beside  her,  men 
of  the  world  always  invent  a  pretext  for  leaving  her 
alone  with  him. 

"Are  you  coming,  Nathan  ?"  said  Canalis. — "Ma- 
dame la  Marquise  will  allow  me  to  go  and  say  a 
25 


386  BEATRIX 

word  to  D'Arthez,  whom  I  see  with  the  Princesse 
de  Cadignan;  I  have  to  perfect  arrangements  for 
speaking  at  the  session  of  the  Chamber  to-morrow. " 
Their  timely  departure  allowed  Calyste  to  recover 
from  the  shock  he  had  experienced;  but  he  com- 
pletely lost  his  strength  and  his  wits  when  he  in- 
haled the  perfume,  fascinating  although  poisonous 
to  him,  of  the  poem  Beatrix  had  made  of  herself. 
Madame  de  Rochefide  had  become  bony  and  angular, 
her  complexion  was  almost  gone,  she  was  thin  and 
withered  and  had  dark  circles  around  her  eyes ;  but 
she  had  that  evening  embellished  her  premature 
ruins  with  the  most  ingenious  conceptions  of  the 
Article  Paris.  It  had  occurred  to  her,  as  it  does  to 
all  deserted  women,  to  assume  a  virginal  air,  recall- 
ing, by  dint  of  a  cloud  of  fluffy  white  materials, 
Ossian's  damsels  ending  in  a,  whom  Girodet  has 
painted  so  artistically.  Her  light  hair  enveloped 
her  long  face  in  billows  of  curls  in  which  the  rays  of 
light  from  the  footlights  glistened,  attracted  by  the 
lustre  of  perfumed  oil.  Her  pale  brow  shone.  She 
had  applied  the  faintest  touch  of  rouge  to  her 
cheeks,  and  the  artificial  brilliancy  deceived  the 
eye  as  to  the  faded  pallor  of  her  complexion,  fresh- 
ened with  bran-water.  A  silken  scarf,  so  finely 
woven  as  to  make  one  doubt  if  human  hands  could 
have  done  the  work,  was  twisted  about  her  neck  in 
such  a  way  as  to  diminish  its  length,  to  conceal  it, 
and  to  permit  only  a  vague  glimpse  of  treasures  cun- 
ningly set  off  by  the  corset.  Her  figure  was  a  mas- 
terpiece of  construction.     As  to  her  pose,  a  single 


BEATRIX  387 

word  will  suffice ;  it  was  worth  all  the  trouble  she 
had  taken  to  assume  it  Her  thin,  roughened  arms 
could  hardly  be  seen  beneath  the  artfully  devised 
puffs  of  her  ample  sleeves.  She  presented  that  mix- 
ture of  false  gleams  and  brilliant  silks,  of  fluffy 
gauze  and  crimped  hair,  of  vivacity,  tranquillity 
and  restlessness,  which  has  been  named  je  ne  sais 
quoi.  Everybody  knows  what  je  ne  sais  quoi  im- 
plies. It  implies  much  wit,  good  taste  and  warmth 
of  temperament  Beatrix  was  therefore  a  piece  of 
scenery,  with  transformations  and  a  prodigious 
amount  of  mechanism.  The  performance  of  one  of 
those  dramas  in  which  the  scenes  remind  one  of 
fairyland,  and  which  are  also  very  skilfully  dia- 
logued, drives  men  who  are  naturally  unartificial  to 
distraction,  for,  by  virtue  of  the  law  of  contrasts, 
they  feel  an  insane  desire  to  play  with  the  puppets. 
She  was  false  but  alluring,  affected  but  agreeable, 
and  certain  men  adore  the  women  who  play  at  se- 
duction as  they  would  play  at  a  game  of  cards.  This 
is  the  reason.  Man's  desire  is  a  syllogism  which 
reasons  from  this  exterior  cunning  to  secret  skill  in 
the  art  of  pleasure.  The  mind  says  to  itself,  with- 
out speaking:  "A  woman  who  knows  how  to  make 
herself  so  beautiful  must  have  many  other  resources 
in  passion. "  And  it  is  true.  Deserted  women  are 
the  ones  who  love,  women  who  preserve  their  at- 
tractions are  the  ones  who  know  how  to  love.  Now, 
although  this  lesson  in  Italian  had  cruelly  wounded 
Beatrix's  self-esteem,  her  nature  was  naturally  too 
artificial  for  her  not  to  take  advantage  of  it 


388  BEATRIX 

"It  isn't  a  question  of  loving  you,"  she  had  said, 
a  few  moments  before  Calyste  appeared;  "we  must 
keep  you  on  your  mettle  when  we  have  you  in  our 
clutches ;  that  is  the  secret  of  the  women  who  want 
to  hold  on  to  you.  The  dragons  set  to  guard  treas- 
ures are  armed  with  claws  and  wings!" 

"I  will  make  a  sonnet  of  your  idea,"  Canalis  re- 
plied, just  as  Calyste  entered  the  box. 

At  a  single  glance  Beatrix  divined  Calyste's 
frame  of  mind;  she  recognized  the  marks  of  the 
collar  she  had  put  upon  him  at  Les  Touches,  all 
fresh  and  red.  Calyste,  hurt  by  her  slur  at  his 
wife,  hesitated  between  his  dignity  as  a  husband, 
the  defense  of  Sabine,  and  inviting  a  harsh  word  to 
be  cast  into  a  heart  from  which  so  many  memories 
exhaled,  a  heart  he  believed  to  be  still  bleeding. 
The  marchioness  noticed  his  hesitation;  she  had 
made  that  slighting  remark  only  to  ascertain  how 
far  her  empire  over  him  extended ;  and  when  she 
saw  how  weak  he  was,  she  came  to  his  assistance 
and  relieved  him  from  his  embarrassment.  "Well, 
my  friend,  you  find  me  alone,"  she  said  when 
the  two  courtiers  had  gone;  "yes,  alone  in  the 
world!" 

"You  have  forgotten  me,  then,  have  you.?"  said 
Calyste. 

"You!"  she  replied,  "aren't  you  married?  That 
was  one  among  the  many  blows  I  have  undergone 
since  we  last  saw  each  other.  'Not  only,'  I  said  to 
myself,  'am  I  bereft  of  his  love,  but  of  a  friendship 
which  I  believed  to  be  a  true  Breton  friendship.' 


BEATRIX  389 

We  can  accustom  ourselves  to  everything.  I  suffer 
less  now,  but  I  am  not  what  I  was.  This  is  the  first 
time  I  have  opened  my  heart  for  a  long  while. 
Obliged  to  be  proud  before  the  indifferent,  and  as 
haughty  as  if  I  had  never  fallen  before  those  who 
pay  court  to  me,  I  had  no  ear,  having  lost  my  dear 
Felicite,  into  which  I  could  whisper:  *I  am  suffer- 
ing!' And  so  I  may  tell  you  now  how  great  my 
anguish  was  when  I  saw  you  within  arm's  length  of 
me,  unseen  by  you,  and  how  great  is  my  joy  now  that 
I  see  you  here  by  my  side.  Yes,"  she  said,  in  an- 
swer to  a  gesture  from  Calyste,  "this  is  almost 
fidelity.  That's  the  way  it  is  with  us  miserable 
creatures!  a  mere  nothing,  a  visit,  is  everything  to 
us.  Ah !  you  loved  me  as  I  deserved  to  be  loved  by 
the  man  who  amused  himself  by  trampling  upon  all 
the  treasures  I  lavished  upon  him !  And,  for  my 
sins,  I  am  unable  to  forget;  I  love,  and  I  propose  to 
be  faithful  to  the  past  which  will  never  return." 

As  she  delivered  this  tirade,  which  she  had  im- 
provised a  hundred  times  before,  she  played  with 
her  eyes  in  such  a  way  as  to  redouble  the  effect  of 
the  words,  which  seemed  to  be  dragged  from  the 
very  bottom  of  her  heart  by  the  violence  of  a  tem- 
pest long  held  in  check. 

Calyste,  instead  of  speaking,  allowed  the  tears 
to  flow  that  were  gathering  in  his  eyes.  Beatrix 
took  his  hand  and  pressed  it,  whereat  he  turned  as 
pale  as  death. 

"Thanks,  Calyste,  thanks,  my  poor  child,  that  is 
how  a  real  friend  responds  to  a  friend's  grief!    We 


390  BEATRIX 

understand  each  other.  No,  don't  say  a  word ! — you 
must  go  now,  for  people  are  looking  at  us,  and  you 
might  grieve  your  wife,  if  anyone  should  happen  to 
tell  her  that  we  had  met,  although  in  the  most  in- 
nocent way,  with  a  thousand  persons  looking  on. — 
Adieu;  I  am  strong,  you  see!" 

She  wiped  her  eyes,  performing  what  is  called,  in 
woman's  rhetoric,  an  antithesis  in  action. 

"Leave  me  to  laugh  the  laugh  of  the  damned  with 
the  indifferent  creatures  who  entertain  me,"  she 
added.  **I  receive  artists,  authors,  all  the  people  I 
knew  at  poor  Camille  Maupin's;  she  may  have 
been  right  after  all !  To  enrich  the  man  you  love, 
and  then  disappear  saying:  *I  am  too  old  for  him !' 
is  to  end  one's  life  like  a  martyr.  And  it's  the  best 
way  when  you  cannot  end  it  as  a  virgin." 

She  began  to  laugh  as  if  to  do  away  with  the  mel- 
ancholy impression  she  might  have  produced  on  her 
adorer. 

**But,"  said  Calyste,  "where  can  I  call  on  you.?" 

"I  have  gone  into  retirement  on  Rue  de  Cour- 
celles,  opposite  Pare  de  Monceaux,  in  a  small  house 
on  a  par  with  my  fortune,  and  I  am  filling  my  head 
with  literature,  but  for  myself  alone,  to  distract  me. 
God  preserve  me  from  the  mania  of  literary 
women! — Go,  go,  leave  me;  I  don't  want  people  to 
talk  about  me,  and  what  wouldn't  they  say,  seeing 
us  together?  Look,  Calyste,  if  you  stay  another 
moment,  I  shall  weep  in  good  earnest" 

Calyste  withdrew,  but  not  until  he  had  given 
Beatrix  his  hand  and  had  felt  for  the  second  time  the 


BEATRIX  391 

profound,  curious  sensation  of  a  double  pressure  full 
of  accompanied  seductive  and  pleasing  suggestion. 

"Mon  Dieu,  Sabine  never  succeeded  in  stirring 
my  heart  like  this!"  was  the  thought  that  assailed 
him  in  the  corridor. 

During  the  rest  of  the  evening,  the  Marquise  de 
Rochefide  did  not  look  directly  at  Calyste  three 
times ;  but  there  were  sidelong  glances  which  were 
just  so  many  tugs  at  the  heartstrings  to  a  man  still 
entirely  absorbed  in  his  rejected  first  love. 

When  the  Baron  du  Guenic  reached  his  home,  the 
splendor  of  his  apartments  made  him  think  of  the 
mediocre  luxury  of  which  Beatrix  had  spoken,  and 
he  hated  his  fortune  because  it  could  not  belong  to 
the  fallen  angel.  When  he  learned  that  Sabine  had 
long  since  retired,  he  was  very  happy  to  find  that  he 
had  one  night  to  himself  to  live  with  his  emotions. 
He  cursed  the  power  of  divination  with  which  Sa- 
bine's love  endowed  her.  When  it  happens  that  a 
man  is  adored  by  his  wife,  she  reads  his  face  like 
an  open  book,  she  is  familiar  with  the  slightest  con- 
tractions of  the  muscles,  she  knows  whence  his 
tranquillity  comes,  she  wonders  as  to  the  cause  of 
the  slightest  melancholy,  she  tries  to  find  out  if  it 
has  to  do  with  herself,  she  studies  his  eyes ;  for  her, 
the  eyes  are  tinged  with  the  dominant  thought,  they 
love  or  they  do  not  love.  Calyste  knew  himself  to 
be  the  object  of  an  adoration  so  profound,  so  ingen- 
uous, so  jealous,  that  he  doubted  his  ability  to 
maintain  an  expression  of  countenance  that  would 
convey  no  hint  of  the  moral  change. 


392  BEATRIX 

"What shall  I  do  to-morrow  morning?"  he  said  to 
himself  as  he  fell  asleep,  dreading  the  species  of  in- 
spection Sabine  was  sure  to  undertake. 

When  she  bade  Calyste  good-morning,  and  even 
sometimes  during  the  day,  Sabine  was  accustomed 
to  ask  him:  "Do  you  love  me  still?"  or:  "I  do 
not  bore  you,  do  I?" — Becoming  inquiries,  varied 
according  to  the  nature  or  spirit  of  different  women, 
and  often  resorted  to,  to  conceal  feigned  or  genuine 
mental  suffering. 

Tempests  stir  up  mire  that  comes  to  the  surface 
of  the  noblest  and  purest  hearts.  And  so,  on  the 
following  morning,  Calyste,  who  unquestionably 
loved  his  child,  jumped  for  joy  when  he  learned 
that  Sabine  was  trying  to  discover  the  cause  of  some 
slight  convulsions  that  little  Calyste  had  been 
having, — as  she  feared  an  attack  of  croup, — and 
that  she  could  not  leave  him. 

The  baron  alleged  a  matter  of  business  as  an  excuse 
for  leaving  the  house  and  to  avoid  having  breakfast 
with  his  wife.  He  fled,  as  prisoners  flee,  happy  to 
be  on  foot  in  the  open  air,  to  walk  across  the  Pont 
Louis  XVI.  and  through  the  Avenue  des  Champs- 
Elysees,  toward  a  cafe  on  the  boulevard  where  he 
amused  himself  by  breakfasting  engargon. 

What  is  there  in  love?  Is  nature  restive  under 
the  social  yoke  ?  does  nature  prefer  that  the  impulse 
of  the  life  it  gives  should  be  spontaneous,  untram- 
meled, — that  it  should  be  a  headlong  torrent,  broken 
by  the  rocks  of  contradiction  and  coquetry,  rather 
than  a  placid  stream  flowing  tranquilly  between  the 


BEATRIX  393 

banks  of  the  mayor's  office  and  the  church  ?  Does 
it  act  designedly  when  it  hatches  these  volcanic 
eruptions,  to  which  we  are  indebted  sometimes  for 
great  men  ? 

It  would  have  been  hard  to  find  a  young  man 
brought  up  more  religiously  than  Calyste,  with 
purer  morals,  or  less  tainted  with  scepticism;  and 
yet  he  was  hurrying  toward  a  woman  utterly  un- 
worthy of  him  although  a  kindly,  radiant  chance 
had  presented  to  him,  in  the  person  of  the  Baronne 
du  Guenic,  a  young  girl  of  truly  aristocratic  beauty, 
of  a  keen  and  refined  wit,  pious,  loving  by  nature 
and  unselfishly  attached  to  him,  of  angelic  sweetness 
of  disposition,  made  even  sweeter  by  her  knowledge 
of  the  love,  the  passionate  love,  despite  his  mar- 
riage, that  he  felt  for  Beatrix. 

The  greatest  men  seem  to  have  retained  a  little 
clay  in  their  composition — filth  still  has  attractions 
for  them.  Woman  therefore  would  seem  to  be  the 
less  imperfect  being,  notwithstanding  her  faults  and 
her  unreasonableness.  Nevertheless,  Madame  de 
Rochefide,  amid  the  procession  of  poetic  pretensions 
that  encompassed  her,  and  despite  her  fall,  belonged 
to  the  highest  nobility;  her  nature  was  more 
ethereal  than  low,  and  concealed  the  courtesan  that 
she  proposed  to  be  beneath  a  most  aristocratic  ex- 
terior. Therefore  this  explanation  would  not  ac- 
count for  Calyste's  strange  passion.  Perhaps  its 
motive  may  be  found  in  a  vanity  so  deeply  buried 
that  moralists  have  not  yet  discovered  this  side  of 
vice.     There  are  men  filled  with  noble  qualities  like 


394  BEATRIX 

Calyste,  handsome  like  Calyste,  rich  and  distin- 
guished, well-bred,  who  tire  themselves  out,  perhaps 
without  knowing  it,  by  marriage  with  a  nature 
similar  to  their  own;  persons  whose  nobility  is  not 
astonished  at  nobility  in  others,  whose  tranquillity 
is  undisturbed  by  grandeur  and  refinement  equal  to 
their  own,  and  who  seek  in  inferior  or  fallen  natures 
the  sanction  of  their  superiority,  assuming  that  they 
do  not  go  to  them  to  beg  for  praise.  The  contrast 
between  moral  decadence  and  the  sublime  attracts 
their  glances.  The  pure  shines  so  brightly  in  the 
vicinity  of  the  impure!  The  contradiction  is  enter- 
taining. Calyste  had  nothing  to  patronize  in  Sa- 
bine, she  was  irreproachable,  and  the  wasted 
strength  of  his  heart  all  went  out  to  Beatrix.  If 
great  men  have  played  before  our  eyes  the  role  of 
Jesus  raising  the  woman  taken  in  adultery,  why 
should  ordinary  men  be  more  virtuous  ? 

Calyste  waited  until  two  o'clock,  living  upon  the 
thought:  "I  am  going  to  see  her  again!"  a  refrain 
which  has  often  paid  the  cost  of  journeys  of  seven 
hundred  leagues! — He  walked  rapidly  to  Rue  de 
Courcelles,  recognized  the  house,  which  he  had 
never  seen,  and  stood — yes,  he,  the  son-in-law  of 
the  Due  de  Grandlieu,  as  rich  and  nobly  born  as  the 
Bourbons,  stood  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  stayed  by 
the  question  put  to  him  by  an  old  servant: 

"Monsieur's  name?" 

Calyste  realized  that  he  must  leave  Beatrix  to  do 
as  she  chose,  and  he  scrutinized  the  garden  and  the 
walls,   covered  with  the  wavy  black  and  yellow 


BEATRIX  395 

lines  produced  by  the  rain  upon  stucco-work  in 
Paris. 

Madame  de  Rochefide,  like  almost  all  ladies  of 
high  station  who  break  their  chains,  had  left  her 
husband  her  fortune  when  she  deserted  him,  as  she 
did  not  wish  to  put  out  her  hand  to  her  tyrant. 
Conti  and  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  had  supplied 
her  material  needs  and  her  mother  had  also  sent  her 
sums  of  money  from  time  to  time.  When  she  was 
left  alone,  she  was  compelled  to  practice  economies 
that  bore  very  hard  upon  a  woman  accustomed  to 
luxurious  living.  She  had  therefore  climbed  to  the 
summit  of  the  hill  on  which  the  Pare  de  Monceaux 
'displays  its  attractions,  and  had  taken  refuge  in 
what  was  once  some  great  nobleman's  second  estab- 
lishment, situated  on  the  street,  but  provided  with 
a  lovely  little  garden,  the  rent  not  exceeding  eight- 
een hundred  francs.  Nevertheless,  she  was  still 
attended  by  an  old  man-servant,  by  a  lady's  maid 
and  by  a  cook  from  Alengon,  all  of  whom  had  re- 
mained faithful  to  her  in  adversity;  so  that  her 
destitution  would  have  been  accounted  opulence  by 
many  ambitious  bourgeoises. 

Calyste  ascended  a  staircase,  the  stone  steps  of 
which  had  been  freshly  scrubbed,  and  the  landings 
filled  with  flowers.  On  the  first  floor,  the  old  valet 
ushered  the  baron  into  his  mistress's  apartments 
through  a  double  door  of  red  velvet  with  red  silk 
lozenges  and  gilded  nails.  The  hangings  of  the 
rooms  through  which  Calyste  passed  were  of  silk 
and  velvet.     Sober-colored  carpets,  ample  draperies 


396  BEATRIX 

at  the  windows,  rich  portieres,  everything  within 
was  in  marked  contrast  to  the  shabby  exterior  of  the 
building,  which  was  very  badly  kept  up  by  the 
owner. 

Calyste  awaited  Beatrix  in  a  quietly  furnished 
salon,  where  luxury  wore  a  very  simple  guise. 
The  room  was  hung  with  garnet  velvet  with  raised 
figures  in  dull  yellow  silk,  the  carpet  was  a  deep 
red,  and  the  windows  resembled  conservatories,  be- 
cause of  the  abundance  of  flowers  in  the  jardinieres; 
it  was  so  dimly  lighted  that  Calyste  could  hardly  dis- 
tinguish upon  the  mantelpiece,  two  antique  Celadon 
vases,  and  between  them  a  silver  cup  attributed  to 
Benvenuto  Cellini,  brought  by  Beatrix  from  Italy. 
The  chairs  of  gilded  wood  upholstered  in  velvet,  the 
magnificent  consoles,  upon  one  of  which  was  a  curi- 
ous clock,  the  table  with  its  Persian  cover, — every- 
thing bore  witness  to  former  opulence,  the  remains 
of  which  had  been  skilfully  disposed.  Upon  a  small 
table,  Calyste  spied  divers  artistic  trifles  and  a  book 
between  whose  leaves  sparkled  the  jeweled  hilt  of  a 
dagger,  used  as  a  paper-knife — the  symbol  of  criti- 
cism. Lastly,  ten  water  colors  in  rich  frames  hang- 
ing on  the  walls,  all  of  them  representing  bedrooms 
in  the  various  habitations  in  which  Beatrix  had 
dwelt  in  the  course  of  her  wandering  life,  afforded  a 
measure  of  the  height  her  impertinence  had  attained. 

The  rustling  of  a  silk  dress  announced  the  ap- 
proach of  the  unfortunate  creature,  who  appeared  in 
a  carefully  studied  toilet  which  would  certainly  have 
told  a  roue  that  he  was  expected.     The  dress,  cut 


BEATRIX  397 

after  the  fashion  of  a  robe  de  chamhre,  in  order 
to  afford  a  glimpse  of  a  corner  of  the  white  breast, 
was  of  pearl-gray  moire,  with  wide,  flowing  sleeves 
from  which  the  arms  emerged,  enveloped  in  puffed 
double  undersleeves,  separated  by  gold  bands  and 
trimmed  with  lace  to  the  end.  The  lovely  hair, 
which  the  skilful  handling  of  the  comb  had  made  to 
appear  abundant,  peeped  out  from  beneath  a  lace 
cap  trimmed  with  flowers. 

"Already?"  she  said  with  a  smile.  "A  lover 
would  not  have  been  in  such  a  hurry.  You  must 
have  secrets  to  tell  me,  haven't  you?" 

She  seated  herself  upon  a  couch,  inviting  Ca- 
lyste  with  a  wave  of  her  hand  to  sit  beside 
her.  By  chance — or  it  may  have  been  with 
malice  aforethought,  for  women  have  two  mem- 
ories, the  memory  of  angels  and  the  memory  of 
devils — she  gave  forth  the  same  perfume  that  she 
used  at  the  time  of  her  meeting  with  Calyste 
at  Les  Touches.  The  first  whiff  of  that  per- 
fume, the  touch  of  that  dress,  the  glance  of  those 
eyes,  which,  in  the  half-darkness,  attracted  the 
light  to  send  it  forth  again— everything  tended  to 
deprive  Calyste  of  his  wits.  The  poor  fellow  was 
seized  anew  with  the  frenzy  that  had  already  come 
within  a  hair's  breadth  of  causing  Beatrix's  death ; 
but  on  this  occasion  she  was  on  the  brink  of  a  couch 
and  not  of  the  Ocean ;  she  rose  to  ring  the  bell  and 
placed  a  finger  on  her  lips.  Calyste,  called  to  order 
by  that  movement,  restrained  himself;  he  under- 
stood that  Beatrix  had  no  hostile  intention. 


398  BEATRIX 

"Antoine,  I  am  at  home  to  no  one,"  she  said  to 
the  old  servant  "Put  some  wood  on  the  fire. — You 
see,  Calyste,  that  I  treat  you  as  a  friend,"  she  con- 
tinued with  dignity,  when  the  old  man  had  left  the 
room;  "do  not  treat  me  as  your  mistress.  I  have 
two  observations  to  make  to  you.  In  the  first  place, 
I  would  not  fight  like  a  fool  over  a  man  somebody 
else  loves;  in  the  second  place,  I  do  not  intend 
to  belong  again  to  any  man  on  earth ;  for  1  fancied, 
Calyste,  that  I  was  loved  by  a  sort  of  Rizzio  who 
was  bound  by  no  engagement,  by  a  man  entirely 
free,  and  you  see  to  what  that  fatal  infatuation  has 
brought  me.  You  are  under  the  empire  of  the  holiest 
of  duties;  you  have  a  young,  amiable,  delightful 
wife;  and  you  are  a  father.  I  should  be  without 
excuse,  as  you  are,  and  we  should  be  two  fools — " 

"My  dear  Beatrix,  all  these  arguments  fall  to  the 
ground  before  a  single  fact:  I  have  never  loved 
anyone  on  earth  but  you,  and  I  was  forced  into  mar- 
riage against  my  will." 

"A  little  trick  that  Mademoiselle  des  Touches 
played  us,"  said  Beatrix  with  a  smile. 

Three  hours  passed,  during  which  Madame  de 
Rochefide  held  Calyste  to  the  observance  of  conju- 
gal fidelity  by  laying  before  him  the  horrible  ulti- 
matum of  an  absolute  renunciation  of  Sabine. 
Nothing  else  would  reassure  her,  she  said,  in  the 
terrible  position  in  which  Calyste's  love  would 
place  her.  Besides,  she  considered  the  sacrifice  of 
Sabine  a  very  small  matter, — she  knew  her  well! 

"She  is  as  a  woman,  my  dear  child,  just  what 


BEATRIX  399 

she  promised  to  be  as  a  girl.  She  is  a  true  Grand- 
lieu,  as  dark,  not  to  say  orange,  as  her  mother  the 
Portuguese,  and  dried  up  like  her  father.  To  tell 
the  truth,  your  wife  will  never  be  ruined  by  your 
desertion,  for  she's  a  great  boy,  quite  able  to  go 
alone.  Poor  Calyste,  is  that  the  sort  of  wife  you 
should  have  had  ?  She  has  fine  eyes,  but  such  eyes 
as  hers  are  common  in  Italy  and  Spain  and  Portugal. 
Can  one  be  truly  loving  with  such  a  meagre  figure.? 
Eve  was  a  blonde ;  dark  women  descend  from  Adam ; 
blondes  are  like  God,  whose  hand  expressed  in  Eve 
His  last  thought  after  the  Creation  was  accom- 
plished." 

About  six  o'clock,  Calyste,  in  desperation,  took 
his  hat  to  go. 

"Yes,  go,  my  poor  boy,  don't  grieve  her  by  mak- 
ing her  dine  without  you!" 

Calyste  remained.  He  was  so  young  and  so  easy 
to  attack  on  his  weak  side. 

"Do  you  really  dare  to  dine  with  me?"  said 
Beatrix,  feigning- amazement,  in  a  tantalizing  tone; 
"my  poor  cheer  does  not  frighten  you,  and  you 
have  enough  independence  to  overwhelm  me  with 
joy  by  this  little  proof  of  affection?" 

"Just  let  me  write  a  word  to  Sabine,"  he  said, 
"for  she  would  wait  for  me  till  nine  o'clock." 

"There's  my  writing  table,"  said  Beatrix. 

She  lighted  the  candles  herself  and  brought  one  to 
the  table  in  order  to  read  what  Calyste  wrote. 

"  'My  dear  Sabine — ' 

"My  dear!  so  your  wife  is  still  dear  to  you?"  she 


400  BEATRIX 

said,  looking  at  him  with  an  expression  cold  enough 
to  freeze  the  marrow  in  his  bones.  "Go,  go  and 
dine  with  her!" 

"  *I  am  dining  at  a  restaurant  with  some  friends — * 

"A  lie!  For  shame!  you  are  unworthy  to  be 
loved  by  her  or  by  me !  Men  are  all  cowards  with 
us!  Go,  monsieur,  go  home  and  dine  with  your 
dear  Sabine." 

Calyste  threw  himself  back  on  his  chair  and  be- 
came as  pale  as  death.  The  Bretons  possess  cour- 
ageous natures  which  lead  them  into  obstinacy 
when  difficulties  arise.  The  young  baron  straight- 
ened himself  up,  planted  his  elbow  on  the  table, 
rested  his  chin  upon  his  hand,  and  gazed  with  a 
gleaming  eye  at  the  implacable  Beatrix.  He  was 
so  superb  that  a  woman  from  the  North  or  from  the 
South  would  have  fallen  on  her  knees,  saying: 
"Take  me!"  But  Beatrix,  who  was  born  upon  the 
confines  of  Normandie  and  Bretagne,  belonged  to  the 
de  Casteran  race;  desertion  had  developed  in  her 
the  ferocious  instincts  of  the  Frank,  the  evil  quali- 
ties of  the  Norman;  her  vengeance  demanded  a 
shocking  scandal  and  she  was  not  touched  by  his 
sublime  attitude. 

"Dictate  what  1  am  to  write  and  I  will  obey," 
said  the  poor  boy.     "But  then — " 

"Why,  yes,"  said  she,  "for  that  will  mean  that 
you  still  love  me  as  you  loved  me  at  Guerande. 
Write:  'I  am  dining  out;  don't  wait  for  me!' 

"And—?"  said  Calyste,  supposing  that  there  was 
more  to  come. 


BEATRIX  401 

"Nothing;  sign  your  name.  Good,"  said  she, 
pouncing  upon  the  note  with  repressed  joy,  "I  will 
send  this  by  a  messenger." 

"And  now—"  cried  Calyste,  rising  from  his  chair 
like  a  man  relieved  of  a  great  weight 

"Ah!  I  reserved  my  freedom  of  action,  I  believe!" 
—said  she,  halting  and  turning  about,  half-way  be- 
tween the  table  and  the  mantelpiece,  to  which  she 
went  to  ring  the  bell.— "Antoine,  have  this^note 
sent  to  its  address.     Monsieur  will  dine  here." 


26 


Calyste  returned  home  about  two  in  the  morning. 
Sabine  sat  up  for  him  until  half-past  twelve,  when 
she  went  to  bed,  fairly  worn  out;  she  slept,  although 
she  had  been  deeply  wounded  by  the  laconic  word- 
ing of  her  husband's  note ;  but  she  invented  an  ex- 
planation! a  wife  who  truly  loves  her  husband 
always  begins  by  explaining  everything  in  his 
favor. 

"Calyste  was  hurried, "she  said  to  herself. 

The  next  morning  the  child  was  much  better  and 
the  mother's  anxiety  was  allayed.  Sabine  came 
in  laughing,  a  few  moments  before  breakfast,  with 
little  Calyste  in  her  arms  to  exhibit  him  to  his 
father,  doing  the  absurd  things  and  saying  the  fool- 
ish words  which  young  mothers  always  do  and  say. 
This  little  conjugal  scene  put  Calyste  in  counte- 
nance ;  he  was  charming  with  his  wife,  thinking  all 
the  time  that  he  was  a  brute.  He  played  like  a 
child  with  Monsieur  le  Chevalier;  indeed  he  played 
with  him  too  much,  he  overdid  his  r61e,  but  Sabine 
had  not  yet  reached  that  degree  of  suspicion  at 
which  a  woman  can  make  such  fine  distinctions. 

At  last,  as  they  sat  at  breakfast,  Sabine  asked: 

*'What  were  you  doing  yesterday?" 

"Portendu^re  kept  me  to  dinner,"  he  replied, 
"and  we  went  to  the  club  for  a  few  games  of  whist " 
(403) 


404  BEATRIX 

"It  is  a  foolish  life,  my  Calyste,"  said  Sabine. 
"The  young  noblemen  of  to-day  ought  to  be  think- 
ing of  regaining  for  their  country  all  the  ground 
their  fathers  lost.  It  is  not  by  smoking  cigars,  play- 
ing whist,  emphasizing  their  idleness,  confining 
themselves  to  making  impertinent  remarks  to  the 
parvenus  who  are  forcing  them  out  of  all  their  posi- 
tions, and  separating  themselves  from  the  masses  to 
whom  they  should  act  as  mind  and  intellect  and  ap- 
pear like  a  special  providence — it  is  not  by  such 
means  as  these  that  they  will  earn  the  right  to 
exist.  Instead  of  being  a  party,  you  will  soon  be 
nothing  more  than  an  opinion,  as  De  Marsay  says. 
Ah!  if  you  knew  how  my  ideas  have  broadened 
since  I  have  nursed  your  child  and  rocked  him  to 
sleep!  I  would  like  to  see  the  ancient  name  of  Du 
Guenic  become  historic!" 

Suddenly  she  gazed  straight  into  Calyste's  eyes, 
as  he  sat  listening  to  her  with  a  pensive  expression, 
and  said  to  him : 

"Confess  that  the  first  note  you  ever  wrote  me 
was  a  little  curt." 

"I  didn't  think  of  sending  word  to  you  till  we 
were  at  the  club — " 

"But  you  wrote  me  on  a  lady's  paper;  there  was 
a  feminine  perfume  hanging  about  it." 

"Club  directors  are  such  curious  fellows!" 

The  Vicomte  de  Portendu^re  and  his  wife,  a 
charming  young  couple,  had  become  so  intimate 
with  the  Du  Guenics  that  they  hired  a  box  at  the 
Italiens  in  common.     The  two  young  wives,  Ursule 


BEATRIX  405 

and  Sabine,  had  been  drawn  together  by  the  delight- 
ful interchange  of  advice  and  suggestions  and  con- 
fidences concerning  children.  While  Calyste,  a 
novice  in  the  art  of  falsehood,  was  saying  to  him- 
self: "I  will  go  and  warn  Savinien,"  Sabine  was 
saying  to  herself:  "It  seems  to  me  that  there  was 
a  coronet  on  that  paper!"  That  thought  passed  in 
and  out  of  her  mind  like  a  flash  of  lightning,  and 
Sabine  scolded  herself  for  entertaining  it;  but  it 
occurred  to  her  that  she  would  go  and  look  at  the 
paper,  which,  in  the  midst  of  her  alarms  the  night 
before,  she  had  tossed  into  her  letter-box. 

After  breakfast  Calyste  went  out,  saying  that  he 
should  soon  return ;  he  entered  one  of  the  low  one- 
horse  cabs  which  were  just  beginning  to  replace  the 
clumsy  cabriolet  of  our  forefathers,  and  in  a  few 
moments  was  set  down  at  the  viscount's  abode  on 
Rue  des  Saints-Plres.  He  begged  him  to  do  him  the 
slight  favor,  to  be  repaid  upon  occasion,  of  telling 
a  falsehood  in  case  Sabine  should  question  the  vis- 
countess. 

Once  more  in  the  street,  Calyste,  having  first 
commanded  the  greatest  possible  speed,  was  driven 
from  Rue  des  Saints-P^res  to  Rue  de  Courcelles  in 
a  very  few  minutes.  He  was  anxious  to  know  how 
Beatrix  had  passed  the  rest  of  the  night.  He  found 
the  lucky  unfortunate  just  out  of  her  bath,  fresh  and 
freshly  beautified,  and  breakfasting  with  excellent 
appetite.  He  admired  the  grace  with  which  the 
angel  ate  boiled  eggs,  and  marveled  at  the  breakfast 
service  in  gold,  a  gift  from  a  music-mad  English  lord, 


406  BEATRIX 

for  whom  Conti  composed  a  romanza  or  two  upon 
themes  furnished  by  his  lordship,  who  had  published 
them  as  his  own.  He  listened  to  a  few  piquant  re- 
marks made  by  his  idol,  whose  main  desire  was  to 
entertain  him,  and  who  feigned  anger  and  wept 
when  he  left  her.  He  intended  to  remain  only  half 
an  hour,  but  it  was  three  o'clock  when  he  reached 
home.  His  fine  English  horse,  a  present  from  the 
Vicomtesse  de  Grandlieu,  looked  as  if  he  were  just 
out  of  the  water,  he  was  so  drenched  with  sweat. 
By  one  of  those  chances  which  all  jealous  women 
arrange  beforehand,  Sabine  was  posted  at  a  window 
looking  on  the  courtyard,  impatient  because  Calyste 
did  not  return,  and  anxious  without  knowing  why. 
The  condition  of  the  horse,  which  was  foaming  at 
the  mouth,  attracted  her  attention. 

"Where  can  he  have  come  from?" 

That  question  was  breathed  in  her  ear  by  that 
power  which  is  not  conscience,  which  is  not  the  evil 
or  the  good  angel ; — but  which  sees,  which  foresees, 
which  shows  us  the  unknown,  which  makes  us  be- 
lieve in  mental  beings,  in  creatures  born  in  our 
brains,  going  and  coming,  and  living  in  the  invisi- 
ble sphere  of  thought. 

"Where  have  you  come  from,  pray,  my  dear 
angel?"  she  said  to  Calyste,  going  to  meet  him  as 
far  as  the  first  landing  of  the  staircase.  "Abd-el- 
Kader  is  almost  foundered;  you  were  to  be  away 
only  a  moment  and  1  have  been  waiting  for  you 
three  hours." 

"Let  me  see,"  said  Calyste  to  himself;  "I  will 


BEATRIX  407 

get  out  of  this  scrape  on  the  plea  of  a  present" — 
He  was  making  progress  in  dissimulation. — "Dear 
nurse,*'  he  said  aloud,  putting  his  arm  about  his 
wife's  waist  with  more  cajolery  than  he  would  have 
employed  had  he  not  been  guilty,  "it  is  impossible, 
I  see,  for  us  to  keep  a  secret,  however  innocent  it 
may  be,  from  a  woman  who  loves  us — " 

"Secrets  aren't  usually  divulged  on  stairways," 
she  said  with  a  laugh.     "Come." 

As  they  passed  through  the  salon  adjoining  her 
bedroom,  she  saw  Calyste's  face  in  a  glass  mirror, 
at  a  moment  when  he,  not  knowing  that  her  eyes 
were  upon  him,  allowed  his  fatigue  and  his  real 
feelings  to  appear,  and  no  longer  smiled. 

"The  secret?" — she  said,  turning  around  and 
facing  him. 

"Your  heroism  as  a  nurse  makes  the  presumptive 
heir  of  the  Du  Guenics  even  dearer  to  me  than  he 
would  otherwise  have  been,  and  I  determined  to 
give  you  a  surprise,  just  like  a  good  bourgeois  of 
Rue  Saint-Denis.  At  this  moment  a  toilet  table  is 
being  completed  for  you  upon  which  genuine  artists 
have  worked ;  my  mother  and  Aunt  Zephirine  have 
contributed — " 

Sabine  threw  her  arms  around  Calyste  and 
strained  him  to  her  heart,  her  head  resting  against 
his  shoulder ;  she  gave  way  beneath  the  weight  of 
happiness,  not  because  of  the  toilet  table,  but  be- 
cause her  first  suspicion  was  dissipated.  It  was 
one  of  those  magnificent  outbursts  which  can  be 
counted,  and  of  which  all  passions,  even  the  most 


408  BEATRIX 

intense,  cannot  afford  to  be  lavish,  for  life  would 
be  too  soon  burned  out  At  such  a  time,  a  man 
should  fall  at  a  woman's  feet  and  worship  her, 
for  it  is  a  sublime  moment,  when  the  forces  of  the 
heart  and  the  mind  gush  forth,  as  the  water  gushes 
forth  from  the  fountains  embellished  with  architect- 
ural nymphs.     Sabine  burst  into  tears. 

Suddenly,  as  if  bitten  by  a  viper,  she  left  Calyste, 
threw  herself  upon  a  divan  and  fainted,  for  the  sud- 
den reaction  produced  by  a  cold  blast  upon  her  blaz- 
ing heart  almost  killed  her.  As  she  held  Calyste 
in  a  close  embrace,  with  her  nose  buried  in  his  cra- 
vat, thinking  of  naught  but  her  joy,  she  detected 
the  odor  of  the  note  paper  I  Another  woman's  head 
had  rested  there,  and  her  hair  and  her  face  had  left 
behind  an  adulterous  perfume.  She  had  kissed  the 
spot  upon  which  her  rival's  kisses  were  still  warm ! 

"What  is  the  matter.?"  said  Calyste,  after  he  had 
restored  Sabine  to  consciousness  by  passing  a  wet 
cloth  over  her  face. 

"Go  and  bring  my  physician  and  my  accoucheur, 
both  of  them !  I  am  sure  that  there  is  something 
wrong  with  my  milk. — They  won't  come  instantly 
unless  you  go  yourself  and  beg  them  to  do  it." 

The  you — in  place  of  the  usual  familiar  thou — 
impressed  Calyste,  who  rushed  from  the  room  in 
dismay.  As  soon  as  she  heard  the  porte-cochere 
close,  Sabine  sprang  to  her  feet  like  a  frightened 
deer  and  ran  about  the  salon  like  a  madwoman, 
crying: 

"My  God!  my  God!  my  God!" 


BEATRIX  409 

Those  two  words  replaced  all  her  ideas.  The 
crisis  she  had  alleged  as  a  pretext  actually  super- 
vened. Each  individual  hair  in  her  head  became  a 
needle  heated  red  in  the  flame  of  the  nerves.  Her 
boiling  blood  seemed  to  be  trying  at  the  same 
moment  to  penetrate  the  nerves  and  to  leave  the 
body  through  the  pores!  For  a  moment  she  was 
blind. 

"I  am  dying!"  she  cried. 

When,  at  this  terrible  shriek  of  the  outraged  wife 
and  mother,  her  maid  entered  the  room ;  when,  hav- 
ing been  taken  up  and  put  to  bed,  she  had  recovered 
her  sight  and  reasoning  power,  the  first  gleam  of  in- 
telligence prompted  her  to  send  the  girl  to  her  friend, 
Madame  de  Portendu^re.  She  felt  her  ideas  whirl- 
ing about  in  her  brain  like  straws  caught  up  by  a 
whirlwind. 

"1  saw  myriads  of  them  at  once,"  she  said  later. 

She  rang  for  her  footman,  and,  in  the  mad  ex- 
citement of  fever,  had  the  strength  to  write  the  fol- 
lowing letter;  for  she  was  impelled  by  one  frenzied 
desire, — ^the  desire  to  be  certain  of  something: 


To  Madame  la  Baronne  Du  Guenic 

*'When  you  come  to  Paris,  dear  mamma,  as  you 
have  given  us  reason  to  hope  that  you  will  do,  I  will 
thank  you  myself  for  the  lovely  present  with  which 
you  and  Aunt  Zephirine  and  Calyste  have  chosen  to 
express  your  gratitude  to  me  for  having  fulfilled 


4IO  BEATRIX 

my  duties  as  a  mother.  I  was  already  abundantly 
rewarded  by  my  own  happiness ! — I  cannot  pretend 
to  describe  the  pleasure  the  lovely  toilet  table  has 
given  me;  when  you  are  with  me  I  will  tell  you 
about  it.  Be  sure  that  whenever  I  dress  before  the 
beautiful  table,  I  shall  always  think,  with  the  Roman 
matron,  that  my  loveliest  ornament  is  our  dear  little 
angel. — " 

She  sent  the  letter  to  the  post  by  her  maid. 
When  the  Vicomtesse  de  Portenduere  appeared,  this 
first  paroxysm  of  madness  was  succeeded  by  an 
alarming  attack  of  fever. 

"Ursule,  I  feel  as  if  I  were  dying,"  said  she. 

"What's  the  matter,  my  dear?" 

"What  did  Savinien  and  Calyste  do  yesterday 
after  dining  with  you.?" 

"Dining  with  me?"  repeated  Ursule,  to  whom 
her  husband  had  as  yet  said  nothing,  not  supposing 
that  the  investigation  would  begin  at  once.  "Sa- 
vinien and  I  dined  together  yesterday  and  then  went 
to  the  Italiens,  without  Calyste." 

"Ursule,  my  darling,  in  the  name  of  your  love 
for  Savinien,  don't  mention  what  you  have  just  told 
me  or  what  I  am  going  to  tell  you.  Only  you  will 
know  of  what  I  die. — I  am  betrayed  at  the  end  of 
the  third  year,  and  I  am  only  twenty-two  and  a 
half!" 

Her  teeth  chattered,  her  eyes  were  dull  and  heavy ; 
her  face  took  on  a  greenish  tinge  and  the  appearance 
of  an  old  Venetian  mirror. 

"You,  so  lovely! — Betrayed  for  whom?" 


BEATRIX  411 

"I  have  no  idea!  But  Calyste  has  lied  to  me 
twice.  Not  a  word!  Don't  pity  me,  don't  be 
angry,  feign  ignorance ;  you  can  perhaps  find  out 
who  it  is  through  Savinien.  Oh!  that  letter  yes- 
terday!" 

And,  shivering  in  her  chemise,  she  rushed  to  a 
small  secretary  and  took  out  the  letter. 

"A  marchioness's  coronet!"  said  she,  going  back 
to  bed.  "Do  you  know  whether  Madame  de  Roche- 
fide  is  in  Paris.? — Ah!  I  shall  have  a  heart  to  weep 
upon,  to  lament  upon! — Oh!  my  darling,  to  see 
one's  beliefs,  one's  poem,  one's  idol,  one's  virtue, 
one's  happiness,  all  shattered,  withered,  lost! — 
There  is  no  God  in  heaven !  no  love  on  earth,  no  life 
in  the  heart,  nothing  anywhere!  I  don't  know 
whether  it  is  day  or  night,  I  doubt  if  there  is  any 
sun — Indeed  I  have  such  a  pain  at  my  heart  that  I 
hardly  feel  the  horrible  agony  that  is  tearing  at  my 
breast  and  my  face.  Luckily  the  little  one  is 
weaned;  my  milk  would  have  poisoned  him!" 

At  that  thought  a  torrent  of  tears  gushed  from 
Sabine's  eyes,  which  had  thus  far  been  dry. 

Pretty  Madame  de  Portendu^re,  holding  in  her 
hand  the  fatal  letter  which  Sabine  had  put  to  her 
nose  for  the  last  time,  stood  aghast  before  this  gen- 
uine grief,  deeply  impressed  by  the  agony  of  love 
which  she  could  not  understand,  notwithstanding 
the  incoherent  words  by  which  Sabine  tried  to  tell 
her  the  story.  Suddenly,  Ursule's  face  was  lighted 
up  by  one  of  those  ideas  which  occur  only  to  sincere 
friends. 


412  BEATRIX 

**I  must  save  her!"  she  said  to  herself. — "Wait 
for  me,  Sabine,"  she  cried.  "I  am  going  to  find 
out  the  truth. " 

"Ah!  in  my  grave  I  will  love  you!"  cried  Sa- 
bine. 

The  viscountess  flew  to  the  Duchesse  de  Grand- 
lieu,  demanded  the  most  profound  secrecy,  and 
described  Sabine's  position. 

"Madame,"  said  she  as  she  concluded,  "is  it  not 
your  opinion  that,  to  avoid  a  horrible  illness  and 
perhaps  madness — who  knows? — we  ought  to  tell 
the  doctor  the  whole  story,  and  invent  some  fable  or 
other  to  the  advantage  of  that  wretched  Calyste, 
which  will  make  him  appear  innocent  for  the 
time?" 

"My  dear  girl,"  said  the  duchess,  whose  blood 
ran  cold  as  she  listened,  "friendship  has  given  you 
for  a  moment  the  experience  of  a  woman  of  my  own 
age.  I  know  how  Sabine  loves  her  husband,  and 
you  are  right  in  thinking  she  may  go  mad." 

"But  she  may  lose  her  beauty,  and  that  would  be 
even  worse!"  said  the  viscountess. 

"Let  us  make  haste!"  cried  the  duchess. 

Luckily  the  two  women  were  a  few  moments  in 
advance  of  the  famous  accoucheur  Dommanget,  the 
only  one  of  the  two  experts  whom  Calyste  had  suc- 
ceeded in  finding. 

"Ursula  has  told  me  everything,"  said  the 
duchess  to  her  daughter,  "and  you  are  mistaken. — 
In  the  first  place,  Beatrix  is  not  in  Paris. — As  to 
what  that  angelic  husband  of  yours  did  yesterday, 


BEATRIX  413 

he  lost  a  lot  of  money,  and  he  doesn't  know  which 
way  to  turn  to  pay  for  your  toilet  table." 

"And  what  about  that?"  said  Sabine,  handing 
her  mother  the  letter. 

"That!"  laughed  the  duchess,  "why,  that's  the 
Jockey  Club  paper;  everybody  writes  on  paper 
with  a  crest;  our  grocers  will  be  titled  soon." 

The  prudent  mother  tossed  the  unlucky  letter  into 
the  fire.  When  Calyste  and  Dommanget  arrived, 
the  duchess,  who  had  given  instructions  to  the  ser- 
vants, was  at  once  notified;  she  left  Sabine  in 
charge  of  Madame  de  Portendu^re  and  stopped  Ca- 
lyste and  the  surgeon  in  the  salon. 

"Sabine's  life  is  in  danger,  monsieur,"  said  she 
to  Calyste;  "you  have  been  false  to  her  with  Ma- 
dame de  Rochefide — " 

Calyste  blushed  like  a  young  girl,  still  virtuous 
at  heart,  detected  in  transgression. 

"And,"  the  duchess  continued,  "as  you  don't 
know  how  to  lie,  you  have  been  so  awkward  that 
she  has  guessed  everything ;  but  I  have  repaired  the 
injury.  You  don't  wish  my  daughter  to  die,  do 
you  ? — All  this.  Monsieur  Dommanget,  will  put  you 
on  the  track  of  the  real  trouble  and  its  cause. — As 
for  you,  Calyste,  an  old  woman  like  myself  can 
understand  your  error,  but  without  forgiving  it 
Such  forgiveness  is  to  be  purchased  by  a  whole 
lifetime  of  happiness.  If  you  care  for  my  esteem, 
save  my  daughter  first  of  all ;  then  forget  Madame 
de  Rochefide — she  is  not  worth  possessing  more 
than  once! — Make  up  your  mind  to  lie,  have  the 


414  BEATRIX 

courage  of  the  criminal  and  his  impudence.  I 
have  lied  outrageously,  and  I  shall  be  compelled 
to  undergo  severe  penance  for  that  deadly  sin!" 

And  she  told  him  of  the  fables  she  had  invented. 
The  clever  surgeon,  sitting  at  the  invalid's  bedside, 
was  already  studying  the  symptoms  for  the  means 
of  warding  off  the  danger.  While  he  was  prescrib- 
ing measures,  whose  success  depended  upon  the 
rapidity  with  which  they  were  executed,  Calyste 
sat  at  the  foot  of  the  bed,  with  his  eyes  fixed  upon 
Sabine,  trying  to  impart  to  his  glance  an  expression 
of  warm  affection. 

"So  it  was  gambling  that  made  those  rings  around 
your  eyes?"  she  said  in  a  feeble  voice. 

This  phrase  made  the  doctor,  the  mother  and  the 
viscountess  shudder,  as  they  glanced  stealthily  at 
one  another.     Calyste  became  as  red  as  a  cherry. 

"That's  what  comes  of  nursing  your  children," 
Dommanget  interposed,  cleverly  and  somewhat 
brutally.  "Husbands  are  bored  to  death  when  they 
are  separated  from  their  wives,  and  they  go  to  the 
club  and  play. — But  don't  regret  the  thirty  thousand 
francs  Monsieur  le  Baron  lost  last  night." 

"Thirty  thousand  francs!"  cried  Ursule  foolishly. 

"Yes,  I  know  all  about  it,"  Dommanget  replied. 
— "I  was  told  this  morning  at  young  Madame  Berthe 
de  Maufrigneuse's  that  Monsieur  de  Trailles  won 
them  from  you,"  he  said  to  Calyste.  "How  can 
you  play  with  such  a  man.?  Frankly,  Monsieur  le 
Baron,  I  don't  wonder  that  you're  ashamed  of  it." 

When  he  saw  his  pious  mother-in-law,  a  duchess, 


BEATRIX  415 

together  with  the  young  viscountess,  a  happy  wife, 
and  an  old  accoucheur,  an  egotist,  lying  like  dealers 
in  curiosities,  the  kind-hearted  and  noble  Calyste 
realized  the  greatness  of  the  danger,  and  he  shed 
two  great  tears  which  deceived  Sabine. 

"Monsieur,"  said  she,  sitting  up  in  bed,  and 
glancing  angrily  at  Dommanget,  "Monsieur  du 
Guenic  can  lose  thirty,  forty,  a  hundred  thousand 
francs,  if  he  pleases,  without  any  person  being  called 
upon  to  blame  him  or  give  him  lessons.  It  is  much 
better  that  Monsieur  de  Trailles  should  win  back 
the  money  we  have  won  from  Monsieur  de 
Trailles." 

Calyste  rose,  put  his  arm  around  his  wife's  neck, 
kissed  her  on  both  cheeks,  and  whispered  in  her  ear : 

"Sabine,  you  are  an  angel!" 

Two  days  later  the  young  woman  was  considered 
out  of  danger.  The  next  day  Calyste  was  at  Ma- 
dame de  Rochefide's,  taking  credit  for  his  infamy. 

"Beatrix,"  he  said,  "you  are  indebted  to  me  for 
a  piece  of  good  fortune.  1  have  sacrificed  my  poor 
wife  to  you.  She  has  discovered  everything.  That 
paper  you  gave  me  to  write  on,  with  your  name  and 
crest,  which  I  never  saw !  I  saw  only  you ! — Luckily 
the  cipher,  your  B,  happened  to  be  rubbed  off.  But 
the  perfume  you  left  upon  me,  the  lies  in  which  I 
involved  myself,  like  a  fool,  betrayed  my  good  for- 
tune. Sabine  nearly  died;  the  milk  went  to  her 
head,  she  has  an  attack  of  erysipelas,  and  it  may  be 
that  she  will  bear  the  marks  of  it  all  her  life." 

As  she  listened  to  this  harangue,  Beatrix's  face 


4l6  BEATRIX 

wore  an  expression  that  would  have  set  the  Seine 
on  fire  if  she  had  looked  at  it. 

"Well,  so  much  the  better,"  she  replied,  "that 
will  whiten  her  for  you  perhaps." 

And  Beatrix,  who  had  become  as  dry  as  her  bones, 
uneven  as  her  complexion,  sharp  as  her  voice,  con- 
tinued in  this  strain  through  a  whole  litany  of 
vicious  epigrams.  A  husband  can  commit  no  greater 
blunder  than  to  talk  about  his  wife,  when  she  is 
virtuous,  to  his  mistress,  unless  it  be  to  talk  about 
his  mistress,  when  she  is  beautiful,  to  his  wife. 
But  Calyste  had  not  yet  received  that  species  of 
Parisian  education  which  we  must  call  the  courtesy 
of  the  passions.  He  neither  knew  how  to  lie  to  his 
wife  nor  to  tell  his  mistress  the  truth,  in  both  of 
which  accomplishments  a  man  must  serve  his  ap- 
prenticeship in  order  to  be  able  to  manage  women. 
Thus,  he  was  forced  to  exert  all  the  power  of  his 
passion  to  obtain  forgiveness  from  Beatrix  after  two 
hours'  solicitation,  during  which  time  it  was  con- 
sistently refused  by  an  offended  angel  who  looked 
at  the  ceiling  in  order  not  to  see  the  culprit,  and 
who  rehearsed  the  arguments  peculiar  to  marchion- 
esses in  a  voice  interlarded  with  little  tears,  that 
seemed  rent,  and  that  she  furtively  wiped  away 
with  the  lace  handkerchief. 

"To  talk  to  me  about  your  wife  the  day  after 
my  fall  from  grace ! — Why  don't  you  tell  me  that 
she's  a  pearl  of  virtue?  I  know  that  she  thinks 
about  your  physical  beauty !  There's  depravity  for 
you!    For  my  part,  I  love  your  mind!  for,  you  must 


BEATRIX  417 

understand,  my  dear,  that  you  are  horribly  ugly, 
compared  with  some  of  the  shepherds  in  the  Roman 
Campagna!" — etc.,  etc 

This  phraseology  may  cause  surprise,  but  it  was 
part  of  a  system  upon  which  Beatrix  had  meditated 
long  and  profoundly.  At  her  third  incarnation — 
for  with  each  succeeding  passion  a  woman  becomes 
an  entirely  different  person — she  advances  so  much 
farther  in  libertinism, — the  only  word  which  gives 
an  accurate  idea  of  the  experience  such  adventures 
afford.  Now  the  Marquise  de  Rochefide  had  judged 
herself  by  her  mirror.  Women  of  intelligence  are 
never  deceived  as  to  themselves;  they  count  their 
wrinkles,  they  are  present  at  the  birth  of  the  crow's 
foot,  they  watch  the  gray  hairs  peep  out,  they  know 
themselves  by  heart  and  announce  that  fact  too 
frankly  by  the  strenuous  efforts  they  make  to  pre- 
serve themselves.  And  so,  in  order  to  contend  with 
a  superb  young  wife  and  to  win  six  triumphs  over 
her  each  week,  Beatrix  had  had  recourse  to  the 
science  of  courtesans  for  her  advantages.  Without 
confessing  to  herself  the  infamy  of  the  plan,  im- 
pelled to  the  employment  of  such  means  by  a  sort 
of  Turkish  passion  for  handsome  Calyste,  she  had 
vowed  to  make  him  believe  that  he  was  ungraceful 
and  ugly  and  had  a  bad  figure,  and  to  conduct  her- 
self as  if  she  hated  him.  No  system  is  more  fruit- 
ful in  results  with  arrogant  men.  With  such  men, 
is  it  not  renewing  the  first  day's  triumph  on  each 
succeeding  day,  to  be  forced  to  overcome  this  cun- 
ning disdain.?  It  is  more  than  that,  it  is  flattery 
27 


4l8  BEATRIX 

concealed  beneath  the  livery  of  hate,  and  owing 
thereto  the  charm,  the  truth  with  which  all  metamor- 
phoses are  clothed  by  the  sublime,  unknown  poets 
who  invented  them. 

Does  not  a  man  say  to  himself  under  such  cir- 
cumstances; "1  am  irresistible!"  or:  "I  love  her 
dearly,  for  I  can  overcome  her  repugnance"?  If 
you  deny  this  principle,  divined  by  flirts  and  cour- 
tesans of  all  social  zones,  let  us  deny  the  seekers 
after  knowledge,  the  investigators  of  mysteries, 
who  were  defeated  for  long  years  in  their  duel  with 
secret  causes. 

Beatrix  had  re-enforced  the  use  of  scorn  as  a 
moral  piston-rod  by  the  perpetual  comparison  of  a 
poetic,  comfortable  home  with  the  H6tel  du  Guenic. 
Every  neglected  wife  who  becomes  careless  about 
herself,  becomes  careless  also  about  her  home,  so 
discouraged  is  she.  With  this  thought  in  her  mind, 
Madame  de  Rochefide  began  a  series  of  stealthy 
attacks  upon  the  magnificence  of  the  Faubourg  Saint- 
Germain,  which  she  characterized  as  absurd.  The 
reconciliation  scene,  in  which  Beatrix  extorted  an 
oath  of  hatred  to  the  wife,  whose  illness,  she  insisted, 
was  a  farce,  took  place  in  a  genuine  bosky  grove 
where  she  ogled  and  leered,  surrounded  by  beautiful 
flowers,  by  jardinieres  of  unrivaled  magnificence. 
The  science  of  airy  nothings,  of  fashionable  trifles, 
she  carried  to  extremes.  As  she  had  been  left 
without  shelter  against  the  contempt  of  society  by 
Conti's  desertion,  Beatrix  was  determined  to  ac- 
quire such  renown,  at  least,  as  depravity  affords. 


BEATRIX  419 

The  misery  of  a  young  wife,  a  Grandlieu,  rich  and 
lovely,  would  be  a  pedestal  for  her. 

When  a  woman  goes  back  to  her  ordinary  manner 
of  life  after  nursing  her  first  child,  she  reappears  in 
society  more  charming  than  ever.  If  this  phase  of 
maternity  rejuvenates  women  of  a  certain  age,  it 
imparts  to  young  women  a  rosy-hued  splendor,  a 
joyous  sprightliness,  a  brio,  if  we  may  be  allowed  to 
apply  to  the  body  the  word  that  the  Italians  apply  to 
the  mind.  When  she  tried  to  resume  the  delightful 
habits  of  the  honeymoon,  Sabine  found  Calyste  by 
no  means  the  same.  The  unhappy  creature  watched 
him,  instead  of  abandoning  herself  to  such  happi- 
ness as  might  have  been  hers.  She  sought  the  fatal 
perfume  and  smelt  it  The  result  was  that  she  did 
not  confide  again  in  her  friend  or  in  her  mother, 
who  had  charitably  deceived  her.  She  longed  for 
certainty,  and  certainty  was  not  long  in  coming. 
Certainty  is  never  lacking;  it  is  like  the  sun  and 
soon  makes  blinds  necessary.  In  love,  the  fable  of 
the  Woodcutter  summoning  Death  is  constantly 
repeated;  we  call  on  certainty  to  make  us  blind. 

One  morning,  a  fortnight  after  the  first  crisis, 
Sabine  received  this  crushing  letter: 

To  Madame  la  Baronne  du  Guenic 

"Guerande. 
**My  dear  daughter, 

"My  sister  Zephirine  and  I  are  lost  in  conjectures 

as  to  the  toilet  table  mentioned  in  your  letter ;  I  am 


420  BEATRIX 

writing  to  Calyste  about  it,  and  I  beg  you  to  par- 
don our  ignorance.  You  can  not  doubt  our  hearts. 
We  are  heaping  up  riches  for  you.  Thanks  to  Ma- 
demoiselle de  Pen-Hoel's  advice  as  to  the  invest- 
ment of  your  property,  you  will  find  yourselves  in 
a  few  years  in  possession  of  a  considerable  fortune, 
without  any  diminution  of  income  meanwhile. 

"Your  letter,  my  dear  daughter,  whom  I  love  as 
dearly  as  if  I  had  carried  you  in  my  bosom  and 
fed  you  with  my  milk,  surprised  me  by  its  brev- 
ity, and  above  all,  by  your  silence  as  to  my  dear 
little  Calyste;  there  was  nothing  you  could  tell 
me  about  his  father,  for  I  know  how  happy  he  is ; 
but—"  etc 

Sabine  wrote  across  this  letter:  Every  noble 
Breton  is  not  utterly  abandoned  to  falsehood! — and 
placed  it  on  Calyste's  desk.  Calyste  found  the  let- 
ter there  and  read  it  When  he  had  satisfied  him- 
self as  to  the  handwriting  of  Sabine's  words,  he 
threw  the  letter  into  the  fire,  determined  to  deny 
that  he  had  ever  received  it  Sabine  passed  a  whole 
week  in  an  agony  unknown  to  the  angelic  or  soli- 
tary souls  whom  the  wicked  angel's  wing  has 
never  brushed.     Calyste's  silence  frightened  her. 

"I,  who  should  be  all  sweetness  to  him,  who 
should  cause  him  nothing  but  pleasure,  have  dis- 
pleased him,  wounded  him! — My  virtue  has  made 
itself  hateful  to  him;  I  must  have  humiliated  my 
idol!"  she  said  to  herselt 

These  thoughts  ploughed  furrows  in  her  heart 


BEATRIX  421 

She  longed  to  ask  pardon  for  her  fault,  but  certainty- 
hurled  fresh  proofs  at  her. 

Beatrix,  become  bold  and  insolent,  wrote  to  Ca- 
lyste  one  day  at  his  own  house;  Madame  du  Guenic 
received  the  letter  and  handed  it  unopened  to  her 
husband,  but  she  said  to  him  with  death  at  her 
heart  and  in  an  altered  voice : 

"This  letter  comes  from  the  Jockey  Club,  my 
dear — I  recognize  the  odor  and  the  paper." 

Calyste  blushed  and  put  the  letter  in  his  pocket 

"Why  don't  you  read  it.?" 

"I  know  what  they  want  of  me." 

The  young  woman  sank  upon  a  chair.  She  no 
longer  had  the  fever,  she  no  longer  wept,  but  she 
was  assailed  by  one  of  the  paroxysms  of  fury  which, 
in  such  feeble  creatures,  give  birth  to  miracles  of 
crime,  which  place  arsenic  in  their  hands,  either 
for  themselves  or  for  their  rivals.  Little  Calyste 
was  brought  in  and  she  took  him  on  her  knee  to 
dandle  him.  The  child,  newly  weaned,  felt  for  the 
breast  through  her  dress. 

"He  remembers!" — she  said  in  an  undertone. 

Calyste  went  to  his  own  room  to  read  the  letter. 

When  she  was  alone,  the  young  woman  burst  into 
tears, — such  tears  as  women  shed  when  they  are 
alone.  Grief,  like  pleasure,  has  its  period  of  initi- 
ation. The  first  crisis,  which  in  Sabine's  case  was 
nearly  fatal,  has,  like  the  first  fruits  of  every- 
thing, no  recurrence.  It  is  the  opening  wedge  of 
the  sufferings  of  the  heart;  the  others  are  expected, 
the  shattering  of  the  nerves  is  familiar,  and  the 


422  BEATRIX 

sum  total  of  our  strength  has  made  its  dispositions  for 
energetic  resistance.  And  so  Sabine,  sure  of  treach- 
ery, passed  three  hours  with  her  son  in  her  arms,  at 
the  corner  of  the  hearth,  and  was  amazed  when  Gas- 
selin,  become  valei  de  chambre,  appeared  and  said: 

*'Madame  is  served." 

*'Tell  monsieur." 

"Monsieur  does  not  dine  at  home,  Madame  la 
Baronne." 

Can  any  one  conceive  the  agony,  under  such  cir- 
cumstances, of  a  young  wife  of  twenty-three,  sitting 
alone  in  the  middle  of  the  immense  dining-room  of 
an  old-fashioned  mansion,  and  served  by  silent 
domestics  ? 

"Order  the  carriage,"  she  said  abruptly;  "I  am 
going  to  the  lialiens." 

She  made  a  magnificent  toilet,  resolved  to  appear 
alone  and  with  a  smiling  face  like  a  happy  wife. 
Amid  the  remorse  caused  by  the  comment  she  had 
written  across  the  letter,  she  had  determined  to  con- 
quer, to  win  Calyste  back  by  excessive  gentleness, 
by  wifely  virtue,  by  the  tenderness  of  the  Paschal 
Lamb.  She  proposed  to  lie  to  all  Paris.  She  loved, 
she  loved  as  courtesans  and  angels  love,  with  pride 
and  with  humility.  But  the  opera  was  Oiello! 
When  Rubini  sang:  //  mio  cor  si  divide,  she  fled. 
Music  is  often  more  powerful  than  the  poet  and  the 
actor,  the  two  most  formidable  natures  that  are  ever 
united.  Savinien  de  Portendu^re  escorted  Sabine 
to  the  peristyle  and  put  her  in  her  carriage,  utterly 
unable  to  account  for  her  precipitate  flight 


BEATRIX  423 

Thereupon,  Madame  du  Guenic  entered  upon  a 
period  of  suffering  of  a  sort  peculiar  to  the  aristoc- 
racy. Envious,  poor,  wretched  though  you  may  be, 
when  you  see  women  wearing  necklaces  and  brace- 
lets, and  having  golden  serpents  with  diamond  heads 
upon  their  arms,  be  sure  that  the  vipers  are  biting, 
that  the  necklaces  have  poisoned  points,  and  that 
those  fragile  bonds  pierce  the  delicate  flesh  to  the 
quick.  All  such  luxury  must  be  paid  for.  In  Sa- 
bine's position,  women  curse  the  pleasures  of  wealth, 
they  no  longer  see  the  gilded  splendor  of  their 
salons,  the  silk  covering  of  the  divans  is  tow, 
the  exotic  plants  are  nettles,  the  perfumes  are 
nauseous,  the  miracles  of  culinary  art  rasp  the 
palate  like  coarse  bread,  and  life  takes  on  the  bitter- 
ness of  the  Dead  Sea.  Two  or  three  examples  will 
depict  such  a  reaction  caused  by  a  particular  salon 
or  a  woman  upon  one's  happiness,  in  such  a  manner 
that  all  those  who  have  experienced  it  will  recognize 
in  them  their  own  domestic  impressions. 

Well-advised  of  this  frightful  reality,  Sabine 
watched  her  husband  closely  when  he  went  out, 
seeking  to  guess  what  the  day  was  to  bring  forth. 
And  with  what  restrained  rage  a  woman  hurls  her- 
self upon  the  red-hot  points  of  these  barbarous  instru- 
ments of  torture ! — What  delirious  joy  if  he  did  not  go 
to  Rue  de  Courcelles !  When  he  returned  home,  the 
study  of  his  brow,  of  his  features,  of  his  hair,  of  his 
eyes,  of  his  manner,  imparted  a  ghastly  interest  to 
trifles,  to  observations  which  she  extended  to  the 
smallest  details  of  the  toilet,   and  which  cause  a 


424  BEATRIX 

woman  to  lose  her  nobility  and  dignity.  These 
ominous  investigations,  which  she  kept  hidden  in 
the  bottom  of  her  heart,  festered  there  and  cor- 
rupted the  delicate  roots  from  which  spring  the  blue 
flowers  of  blessed  trust,  the  golden  stars  of  unselfish 
love  and  all  the  flowers  of  memory. 

One  day  Calyste  looked  at  everything  in  his 
house  ill-humoredly;  he  was  at  home  that  day! 
Sabine  hurried  humbly  about  him,  striving  to  be 
cheerful  and  bright. 

"You  are  cross  with  me,  Calyste;  am  1  not  a 
good  wife  to  you  ?  What  is  it  that  you  don't  like  ?" 
she  asked. 

"All  the  rooms  seem  cold  and  bare,"  he  said; 
"you  don't  understand  these  things." 

"What  do  they  need.?" 

"Flowers." 

"Ah!"  said  Sabine  to  herself,  "it  seems  that  Ma- 
dame de  Rochefide  is  fond  of  flowers." 

Two  days  later  the  rooms  wore  an  entirely  differ- 
ent aspect;  no  one  could  boast  of  having  more  or 
lovelier  flowers  than  those  with  which  they  were 
embellished. 

Some  time  after,  Calyste  complained  of  the  cold 
one  evening  after  dinner.  He  moved  restlessly 
about  on  a  couch,  looking  around  as  if  to  discover  the 
source  of  a  draught,  or  as  if  looking  for  something 
near  him.  It  took  Sabine  a  long  while  to  guess 
the  meaning  of  this  new  whim,  for  there  was  a 
large  stove  that  warmed  the  stairways,  antecham- 
bers and  passageways.      At  last,  after  three  days 


SABINE  AND  CALYSTE  AT  HOME 


One  day  Calyste  looked  at  everything  in  his  house 
ill-humoredly ;  he  ivas  at  home  that  day !  Sabifie 
hurried  humbly  about  him,  striving  to  be  cheerful 
and  bright. 

''You  are  cross  zvith  me,  Calyste;  am  I  not  a 
good  li'ife  to  you  ?  " 


,v)^^ 


BEATRIX  425 

of  meditation,  she  concluded  that  her  rival  must  use 
a  screen  to  provide  the  half-light  so  favorable  to 
the  decadence  of  her  beauty,  and  she  procured  a 
screen,  it  was  fitted  with  mirrors,  and  was  Jewish 
in  its  magnificence. 

"Which  way  will  the  wind  blow  now?"  she  said 
to  herself. 

She  had  not  reached  the  end  of  the  mistress's  in- 
direct criticisms.  Calyste  ate  his  food  in  a  way  to 
drive  Sabine  mad ;  he  handed  his  plates  to  the  ser- 
vant after  dallying  with  two  or  three  mouthfuls. 

"Isn't  it  good?"  Sabine  asked,  in  despair  at  see- 
ing thrown  away  all  the  time  and  care  which  she 
expended  in  conferences  with  her  cook. 

"I  didn't  say  that,  my  angel,"  replied  Calyste 
good-humoredly ;  "1  am  not  hungry,  that's  all." 

A  woman  consumed  by  a  legitimate  passion,  who 
is  required  to  struggle  thus,  abandons  herself  to  a 
sort  of  frenzy  in  order  to  triumph  over  her  rival, 
and  often  overshoots  the  mark,  even  in  the  secret 
regions  of  marriage.  This  cruel,  fierce,  incessant 
contest  in  visible  and,  so  to  speak,  exterior  matters 
of  the  household,  was  also  waged  as  hotly  in  matters 
pertaining  to  the  heart  Sabine  studied  her  atti- 
tudes, her  toilets ;  she  watched  herself  carefully  in 
all  the  infinite  trifles  of  love. 

The  matter  of  the  kitchen  lasted  nearly  a  month. 
Sabine,  assisted  by  Mariotte  and  Gasselin,  invented 
comic  opera  stratagems  to  find  out  what  dishes  Ca- 
lyste was  fed  upon  at  Madame  de  Rochefide's. 
Gasselin  took  the  place  of  Calyste's  coachman  who 


426  BEATRIX 

was  taken  sick  to  order;  Gasselin  was  enabled  thus 
to  become  acquainted  with  Beatrix's  cook,  and 
Sabine  at  last  gave  Calyste  the  same  dishes,  served 
in  better  shape;  but  she  saw  that  he  still  seemed 
dissatisfied. 

"What  is  lacking  now?"  she  asked. 

"Nothing,"  he  replied,  looking  the  table  over  for 
something  that  was  not  there. 

"Ah!"  cried  Sabine  as  she  awoke  the  next  morn- 
ing, "Calyste  wanted  pounded  cockchafers  and 
the  English  preparations  that  they  use  in  drug  stores 
in  oil  cruets;  Madame  de  Rochefide  is  accustoming 
him  to  all  sorts  of  condiments!" 

She  purchased  the  English  cruet  with  its  red-hot 
accompaniments ;  but  she  could  not  pursue  her  dis- 
coveries so  far  as  to  cover  all  the  preparations  in- 
vented by  her  rival. 

This  condition  of  affairs  lasted  several  months ; 
that  will  not  cause  surprise  if  we  remember  the  at- 
tractions that  a  struggle  presents.  It  is  life  itself, 
it  is  preferable,  with  all  its  wounds  and  its  sorrows, 
to  the  dark  shadows  of  disgust,  to  the  poison  of  dis- 
dain, to  the  nullity  of  abdication,  to  the  death  of  the 
heart  which  is  called  indifference.  But  all  Sabine's 
courage  abandoned  her  one  evening  when  she  ap- 
peared in  such  a  toilet  as  the  desire  to  triumph  over 
a  rival  inspires  a  woman  to  invent,  and  Calyste 
said  to  her,  laughingly : 

"It's  no  use,  Sabine,  you  will  never  be  anything 
but  a  lovely  Andalusian!" 

"Alas!"  she  replied,  throwing  herself  upon  her 


BEATRIX  427 

couch,  "I  can  never  be  a  blonde;  but  I  know  that, 
if  this  continues,  I  shall  soon  be  thirty-five  years 
old." 

She  refused  to  go  to  the  Italiens,  she  insisted  upon 
remaining  at  home  all  the  evening.  When  she  was 
alone,  she  tore  the  flowers  from  her  hair  and  stamped 
upon  them,  she  undressed,  she  trampled  her  dress, 
her  scarf,  all  her  clothes,  under  her  feet,  just  as  a 
goat,  caught  in  the  noose  of  his  rope,  does  not  cease 
his  struggles  until  he  feels  that  death  is  upon  him. 
Then  she  went  to  bed.  Her  maid  entered  the  room ; 
her  amazement  may  be  imagined. 
"It's  nothing,"  said  Sabine,  "it  was  monsieur!" 
Unhappy  women  do  have  sublimely  ridiculous 
moments  when  they  utter  falsehoods  in  which,  of 
two  contending  causes  of  shame,  the  more  feminine 
carries  the  day. 


Sabine  grew  thin  at  this  terrible  game;  grief 
gnawed  at  her  heart,  but  she  never  departed  from 
the  r61e  she  had  undertaken  to  play.  Sustained  by 
feverish  excitement,  her  lips  pressed  the  bitter  words 
back  into  her  throat  when  her  agony  suggested  them 
to  her ;  she  repressed  the  gleam  of  her  glorious  black 
eyes,  and  made  them  gentle,  even  to  humility.  But 
it  soon  became  evident  that  her  health  was  failing. 

The  duchess,  an  excellent  mother,  although  her 
piety  was  becoming  more  and  more  Portuguese  in 
its  fervency,  feared  a  fatal  result  of  the  really  seri- 
ous condition  of  health  in  which  Sabine  seemed  to 
take  pleasure.  She  knew  of  the  close  intimacy 
existing  between  Calyste  and  Beatrix.  She  took 
the  trouble  to  entice  her  daughter  to  her  own  house, 
in  order  to  try  and  soothe  the  wounds  in  her  heart, 
and,  above  all,  to  rescue  her  by  force  from  her  mar- 
tyrdom; but  Sabine  for  some  time  maintained  ab- 
solute silence  concerning  her  unhappiness,  fearing 
that  they  would  intervene  between  her  and  Calyste. 
She  said  that  she  was  happy!  Miserable  as  she 
was,  she  recovered  her  pride,  all  her  great  qualities! 

But,  after  a  month,  during  which  Sabine  was 
petted  and  coaxed  by  her  sister  Clotilde  and  her 
mother,  she  confessed  her  chagrin,  confided  her 
agony  to  them,  cursed  life,  and  declared  that  she 
looked  upon  the  approach  of  death  with  delirious 
(429) 


430  BEATRIX 

joy.  She  begged  Clotilde,  who  was  resolved  never 
to  marry,  to  be  a  mother  to  little  Calyste,  the  most 
beautiful  child  that  ever  royal  race  could  desire  for 
presumptive  heir. 

One  evening,  as  she  was  sitting  with  the  duchess 
and  Clotilde,  and  her  youngest  sister  Marie-Athe- 
nais,  whose  marriage  with  the  Vicomte  de  Grand- 
lieu  was  to  be  celebrated  after  Lent,  Sabine  gave 
vent  to  the  culminating  cry  of  her  heart  agony, 
aroused  by  the  outrage  of  a  last  humiliation. 

"Athenais,"  she  said,  when  young  Juste  de 
Grandlieu  left  the  house  about  eleven  o'clock,  "you 
are  soon  to  be  married;  take  warning  from  my 
example !  Refrain  from  displaying  your  attractions 
as  from  a  crime,  do  not  yield  to  the  pleasure  of 
adorning  yourself  to  please  Juste.  Be  calm,  cold 
and  dignified,  measure  the  happiness  you  give  by 
what  you  receive !  It  is  a  base  expedient,  but  it  is 
necessary.  Look  at  me !  I  am  dying  because  of  my 
attractive  qualities.  All  that  there  is  beautiful  or 
sweet  or  great  in  my  character  or  person,  all  my 
virtues,  are  reefs  upon  which  my  happiness  has  been 
wrecked.  I  no  longer  please  my  husband  because 
I  am  not  thirty-six  years  old !  In  the  eyes  of  cer- 
tain men,  youth  is  an  inferiority !  You  can  judge 
nothing  from  an  innocent  face.  I  laugh  frankly,  and 
that's  a  fault!  for,  in  order  to  fascinate,  one  should 
know  how  to  assume  the  melancholy  half-smile  of 
the  fallen  angels  who  are  obliged  to  conceal  long, 
yellow  teeth.  A  fresh  complexion  is  monotonous ! 
men  prefer  a  doll's  plaster  made  of  rouge,  spermaceti 


BEATRIX  431 

and  cold  cream.  I  am  upright,  and  perversity  is  the 
pleasing  quality!  I  am  loyally  loving  and  passion- 
ate, like  a  virtuous  wife,  and  I  should  be  as  tricky 
and  false  and  hypocritical  as  a  provincial  actress. 
I  am  intoxicated  with  happiness  at  having  for  my 
husband  one  of  the  most  delightful  men  in  France, 
I  tell  him  ingenuously  what  a  distinguished  air  he 
has,  how  graceful  his  movements  are,  and  1  show 
him  that  I  think  him  handsome;  but,  to  please  him, 
I  must  turn  my  head  away  in  feigned  disgust,  give 
no  sign  of  love,  and  tell  him  that  his  distinguished 
air  is  a  mark  of  ill  health,  that  he  has  the  figure  of 
a  consumptive,  extol  the  Farnese  Hercules'  shoul- 
ders, anger  him  and  defend  myself,  as  if  i  needed  a 
dispute  to  conceal,  in  my  happy  moments,  some  of 
those  imperfections  which  may  destroy  love.  I  am 
so  unlucky  as  to  admire  lovely  things,  and  I  never 
think  of  exalting  myself  by  bitter,  envious  criticism 
of  everything  that  glistens  with  poesy  and  beauty. 
I  have  no  need  to  have  Canalis  and  Nathan  tell  me, 
in  prose  and  verse,  that  I  have  a  superior  intellect! 
I  am  a  poor,  innocent  child  and  I  know  no  one  but 
Calyste.  Ah !  if  I  had  traveled  the  world  over,  as 
she  has,  if  I  had  said:  'I  love  you!*  as  she  says  it, 
in  all  the  languages  of  Europe,  I  should  be  consoled 
and  pitied  and  adored,  and  1  should  serve  the  Mace- 
donian banquet  of  a  cosmopolitan  passion!  You 
receive  no  thanks  for  your  marks  of  affection  until 
you  have  set  them  in  relief  by  your  sins.  In  short, 
I,  a  woman  of  noble  birth,  must  make  myself  ac- 
quainted with  all  the  impurities  and  all  the  vile 


432  BEATRIX 

schemes  of  harlots! — And  think  of  Calyste,  who  is 
the  dupe  of  her  apish  tricks!  O  mother!  O  my 
dear  Ciotilde!  I  feel  that  my  wounds  are  fatal. 
My  pride  is  a  deceitful  protection,  I  am  defenceless 
against  grief.  I  still  love  my  husband  like  a  mad- 
woman, and  to  bring  him  back  to  me,  I  must  borrow 
from  indifference  all  its  cunning." 

"Silly  girl,"  said  Ciotilde  in  her  ear,  "act  as  if 
you  proposed  to  be  revenged. — " 

"I  propose  to  die  without  a  stain  on  my  character, 
and  without  the  appearance  of  a  fault,"  said  Sabine. 
"Our  vengeance  should  be  worthy  of  our  love." 

"My  child,"  said  the  duchess,  "a  mother  should 
look  upon  life  a  little  more  coolly  than  you  do. 
Love  is  not  the  end  but  the  means,  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  family;  don't  imitate  that  poor  little 
Baronne  de  Macumer.  Excessive  passion  is  barren 
and  deadly.  God  visits  affliction  upon  us  to  ac- 
complish His  own  purposes. — Now  that  Athenais's 
marriage  is  all  arranged,  I  am  going  to  turn  my  atten- 
tion to  you.  I  have  already  discussed  your  delicate 
position  with  your  father,  the  Due  de  Chaulieu  and 
D'Ajuda;  we  shall  find  plenty  of  ways  to  bring 
Calyste  back  to  you." 

"With  the  Marquise  de  Rochefide,  there  is  always 
hope!"  said  Ciotilde,  smiling  at  her  sister;  "she 
doesn't  keep  her  adorers  long." 

"D'Ajuda,  my  angel,"  continued  the  duchess,  "is 
Monsieur  de  Rochefide's  brother-in-law.  If  our  good 
confessor  approves  the  little  wiles  to  which  we 
must  resort  to  secure  the  success  of  the  plan  I  have 


BEATRIX  433 

suggested  to  your  father,  I  can  assure  you  of 
Calyste's  return.  My  conscience  shrinks  from  such 
expedients,  and  I  propose  to  submit  them  to  Abbe 
Brossette's  judgment  We  won't  wait  until  you 
are  in  extremis  before  coming  to  your  assistance,  my 
child.  Be  of  good  cheer !  Your  chagrin  is  so  great 
to-night  that  my  secret  escaped  me ;  for  it  was  im- 
possible not  to  give  you  a  bit  of  hope." 

"Will  it  make  Calyste  unhappy?"  said  Sabine, 
looking  anxiously  at  the  duchess. 

*^Mon  Dieu!  shall  I  ever  be  as  idiotic  as  that?" 
cried  Athenais  naively. 

"Ah!  little  one,  you  know  not  the  steep  defiles 
into  which  virtue  leads  us  when  it  allows  love  to  be 
its  guide,"  rejoined  Sabine,  unconsciously  adopting 
a  poetical  turn  of  expression,  so  distraught  was  she 
by  her  grief. 

The  words  were  said  with  such  penetrating  bitter- 
ness, that  the  duchess,  enlightened  by  Madame  du 
Guenic's  tone  and  accent  and  expression,  deter- 
mined that  there  must  be  some  disaster  as  yet 
undivulged. 

"It  is  twelve  o'clock,  children,  away  with  you!" 
she  said  to  her  two  unmarried  daughters,  whose  eyes 
shone  with  curiosity. 

"Am  I  in  the  way,  despite  my  thirty-six  years?" 
queried  Clotilde,  jocosely. 

And  while  Athenais  was  kissing  her  mother,  she 
leaned  over  Sabine  and  whispered : 

"You  must  tell  me  about  it! — I  will  come  and 
dine  with  you  to-morrow.  If  my  mother  finds  that 
28 


434  BEATRIX 

her  conscience  is  in  danger,  I  will  rescue  Calyste 
from  the  hands  of  the  unfaithful  for  you  myself." 

"Well,  Sabine,"  said  the  duchess,  leading  her 
daughter  into  her  bedroom,  "tell  me  what  new  thing 
has  happened,  my  child." 

"Oh!  mamma,  I  am  lost!" 

"Why  so?" 

"I  was  determined  to  triumph  over  my  rival  and 
I  succeeded;  I  am  enceinte,  and  Calyste  loves  her 
so,  that  I  anticipate  absolute  desertion.  When  his 
infidelity  to  her  is  proved,  she  will  be  furious!  Ah! 
I  suffer  so  horribly  that  1  cannot  endure  it  I  know 
when  he  is  going  there,  I  can  tell  by  his  joyful 
manner;  and  his  ill-humor  tells  me  when  he  has 
just  left  her.  Indeed,  he  no  longer  takes  the  trouble 
to  conceal  the  fact  that  he  cannot  endure  me.  Her 
influence  over  him  is  as  unhealthy  as  are  her  body 
and  soul.  You  will  see  that  she  will  demand,  as 
the  price  of  a  reconciliation,  a  public  desertion,  a 
rupture  like  her  own  with  her  husband,  and  she  will 
take  him  away  from  me,  to  Switzerland  perhaps,  or 
Italy.  He  is  beginning  to  think  it  ridiculous  that 
he  knows  nothing  of  Europe,  and  I  know  the  mean- 
ing of  such  remarks  thrown  out  beforehand.  If 
Calyste  is  not  cured  within  three  months,  I  don't 
know  what  will  happen. — Yes,  I  do  know;  I  shall 
kill  myself!" 

"Think  of  your  soul,  unhappy  child !  Suicide  is 
a  deadly  sin." 

"Do  you  not  understand  ?  she  is  capable  of  having 
a  child  by  him ! — And  if  Calyste  should  love  that 


BEATRIX  435 

woman's  child  better  than  mine!  ah!  that  would  be 
the  limit  of  my  patience  and  resignation!" 

She  fell  upon  a  chair ;  she  had  divulged  the  last 
thoughts  of  her  heart,  she  was  left  with  no  con- 
cealed grief,  and  grief  is  like  the  iron  rod  that  sculp- 
tors place  in  the  middle  of  their  clay — it  is  a 
sustaining  force ! 

"Go  home  now,  my  poor  wounded  darling!  In 
the  face  of  such  misery,  the  abbe  will  undoubtedly 
give  me  absolution  for  the  venial  sins  that  the  ruses 
of  society  compel  us  to  commit.  Leave  me,  my 
child,"  said  she,  going  to  her  prie-Dieu,  "I  am 
going  to  pray  to  Our  Lord  and  the  Blessed  Virgin, 
especially  for  you.  Adieu,  my  dear  Sabine ;  neglect 
none  of  your  religious  duties  if  you  wish  that  we 
should  succeed — " 

"It  would  do  us  no  good  to  succeed,  mother;  we 
should  save  only  the  family.  Calyste  has  killed 
the  holy  fervor  of  love  in  my  heart,  by  surfeiting 
me  with  everything,  even  with  sorrow.  What  a 
honeymoon  was  that,  in  which  I  tasted,  from  the 
very  first  day,  the  bitterness  of  retrospective  infi- 
delity!" 


The  next  day,  about  one  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
one  of  the  cures  of  Faubourg  Saint-Germain — bishop- 
designate  of  one  of  the  sees  vacant  in  1840,  which 
see  he  thrice  refused — Abbe  Brossette,  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  of  the  clergy  of  Paris,  crossed  the 
courtyard  of  the  H6tel  de  Grandlieu  at  the  gait,  for 
which  we  can  find  no  better  name  than  the  gait 
ecclesiastic,  so  instinct  is  it  with  prudence,  mystery, 
calmness,  gravity  and  dignity.  He  was  a  short, 
thin  man,  about  fifty  years  old,  with  a  face  as 
white  as  an  old  woman's,  emaciated  by  fasting, 
wrinkled  by  all  the  sufferings  that  he  made  his  own. 
Two  black  eyes,  gleaming  with  fervent  faith,  but 
softened  by  a  mysterious  rather  than  mystic  ex- 
pression, gave  animation  to  his  apostle-like  face. 

He  almost  smiled  as  he  ascended  the  steps,  so 
sceptical  was  he  as  to  the  magnitude  of  the  emer- 
gency which  led  to  his  being  summoned  by  this 
particular  lamb  of  his  flock;  but,  as  the  duchess's 
hand  was  like  a  sieve  in  the  matter  of  almsgiving, 
she  was  well  worth  the  time  that  her  innocent  con- 
fessions stole  from  the  serious  miseries  of  the  parish. 

When  the  cure  was  announced,  the  duchess  rose 
and  walked  forward  to  meet  him,  a  mark  of  distinc- 
tion which  she  accorded  only  to  cardinals,  bishops, 
simple  priests,  duchesses  older  than  herself  and  per- 
sons of  the  blood  royal. 

*'My  dear  abbe,"  said  she,  motioning  to  a  chair 
(437) 


438  BEATRIX 

with  her  own  hand  and  speaking  in  a  low  tone,  "I 
require  the  sanction  of  your  experience  before  em- 
barking upon  an  unsavory  sort  of  intrigue,  which, 
however,  is  likely  to  have  the  best  results;  and  I 
desire  to  learn  from  you  if  I  shall  find  thorns  in  the 
path  of  salvation  if  I  go  forward  with  it." 

"Madame  la  Duchesse,"  the  abbe  replied,  "do 
not  mingle  spiritual  affairs  and  worldly  affairs; 
they  are  often  irreconcilable.  In  the  first  place, 
what  is  the  difficulty.?" 

"My  daughter  Sabine,  you  must  know,  is  dying 
of  a  broken  heart;  Monsieur  de  Guenic  neglects  her 
for  Madame  de  Rochefide." 

"That  is  a  serious,  a  very  shocking  thing;  but 
you  know  what  our  dear  Saint  Frangois  de  Sales  says 
upon  that  subject  Remember  Madame  Guyon,  too, 
who,  in  default  of  subjects  of  mysticism,  complained 
of  the  proofs  of  conjugal  love;  she  would  have  been 
very  happy  if  her  husband  had  had  a  Madame  de 
Rochefide." 

"Sabine  is  only  too  sweet  with  him,  she  is  too 
much  the  Christian  wife;  but  she  hasn't  the 
slightest  taste  for  mysticism." 

"Poor  young  woman!"  said  the  cure,  mischiev- 
ously. "What  remedy  have  you  conceived  for  this 
calamity.?" 

"I  have  committed  the  sin,  my  dear  director,  of 
thinking  of  letting  loose  upon  Madame  de  Rochefide 
a  pretty  little  fellow,  self-willed  and  running  over 
with  bad  qualities,  who  would  certainly  cause  her 
to  dismiss  my  son-in-law." 


BEATRIX  439 

**My  daughter,"  said  Abbe  Brossette,  caressing 
his  chin,  "we  are  not  now  in  the  confessional,  and 
it  is  not  for  me  to  act  as  your  judge.  From  a 
worldly  point  I  admit  that  that  would  be  de- 
cisive." 

"It  seemed  to  me  a  hateful  expedient!"  she  con- 
tinued. 

"Why  so,  pray?  To  be  sure  it  is  the  part  of  a 
Christian  rather  to  lead  a  lost  woman  from  the  path 
of  evil  than  to  urge  her  on  in  that  path ;  but,  when 
one  is  as  far  advanced  as  Madame  de  Rochefide, — 
why,  the  hand  of  God,  and  not  the  hand  of  man  is 
necessary  to  lead  such  sinners  back  into  the  fold; 
they  require  signs  from  Heaven  of  a  peculiar 
kind." 

"I  thank  you  for  your  indulgence,  father,"  said 
the  duchess;  "but  it  has  occurred  to  me  that  my 
son-in-law  is  a  brave  man  and  a  Breton ;  he  behaved 
like  a  hero  at  the  time  of  Madame's  escapade.  Now, 
if  the  young  spark  who  undertakes  to  fall  in  love 
with  Madame  de  Rochefide  should  have  trouble  with 
Calyste,  and  a  duel  should  follow — " 

"That  was  a  very  wise  reflection,  my  dear  duch- 
ess, and  proves  that  in  such  tortuous  paths  as  these 
we  always  come  upon  stumbling-blocks." 

"But  I  have  discovered  a  method,  my  dear  abbe, 
of  accomplishing  a  great  result,  of  leading  Madame 
de  Rochefide  out  of  the  fatal  path  in  which  she  is 
now  involved,  of  restoring  Calyste  to  his  wife,  and, 
it  may  be,  of  saving  a  poor,  desperate  creature  from 
hell—" 


440  BEATRIX 

"In  that  case,  why  consult  me?"  said  the  cure 
with  a  smile. 

"Ah!"  replied  the  duchess,  "I  must  descend  to 
acts  that  are  decidedly  ugly  to  contemplate." 

"You  don't  propose  to  steal  from  anyone?' 

"On  the  contrary,  I  shall  probably  spend  a  great 
deal  of  money." 

"You  will  not  bear  false  witness? — you — " 

"Oh!" 

"You  will  not  injure  your  neighbor?" 

"Eh!  I  don't  know  about  that." 

"Let  us  hear  your  latest  plan,"  said  the  abbe 
with  interest. 

"  'Suppose  that,  instead  of  driving  one  nail  out 
with  another,'  I  thought  to  myself  as  I  knelt  before 
my  prie-Dieu,  after  imploring  the  Blessed  Virgin  to 
enlighten  me,  '1  should  cause  Calyste's  dismissal 
by  Monsieur  de  Rochefide  by  persuading  that  gentle- 
man to  take  his  wife  back  ?  instead  of  lending  my 
hand  to  evil  that  good  may  result  to  my  daughter,  I 
should  accomplish  one  great  blessing  by  means  of 
another  no  less  great'  " 

The  cure  gazed  thoughtfully  at  the  Portuguese. 

"That  idea  evidently  came  to  you  from  so  great 
a  distance,  that — " 

"For  that  reason,  I  gave  thanks  to  the  Virgin  for 
it!"  said  the  good  woman,  humbly.  "And  I  made  a 
vow,  that,  in  addition  to  offering  up  prayers  for  nine 
days,  I  would  give  twelve  hundred  francs  to  some 
poor  family,  if  I  succeeded.  But  when  I  suggested 
this  plan  to  Monsieur  de  Grandlieu,  he  began  to 


BEATRIX  441 

laugh  and  said  to  me:  *On  my  word  of  honor,  I  be- 
lieve that  you  have  a  devil  all  to  yourselves  to  un- 
dertake such  a  thing  at  your  ages!'  " 

"Monsieur  le  Due,  like  a  good  husband,  made  the 
reply  I  was  about  to  make  when  you  interrupted 
me,"  said  the  abbe,  unable  to  repress  a  smile. 

"But,  father,  if  you  approve  the  idea,  do  you  ap- 
prove the  method  of  execution  ?  We  must  do  with 
a  certain  Madame  Schontz,  a  Beatrix  of  Quartier 
Saint-Georges,  what  I  proposed  to  do  with  Madame 
de  Rochefide,  in  order  to  induce  the  marquis  to  take 
back  his  wife." 

"I  am  certain  that  you  can  do  nothing  wrong," 
said  the  cure  adroitly,  for,  deeming  the  result  essen- 
tial, he  did  not  care  to  know  more  concerning  the 
means.  "You  can  consult  me  in  case  your  con- 
science murmurs,  you  know,"  he  added.  "Suppose 
that,  instead  of  giving  this  lady  on  Rue  Saint- 
Georges  a  further  opportunity  to  cause  scandal,  you 
should  give  her  a  husband?" 

"Ah!  my  dear  director,  you  have  strengthened 
the  only  weak  point  in  my  plan.  You  are  worthy 
to  be  an  archbishop,  and  I  hope  that  I  may  not  die 
without  addressing  you  as  'Your  Eminence.'  " 

"I  see  but  one  possible  obstacle  in  all  this,"  con- 
tinued the  cure. 

"What  is  that  ?" 

"Suppose  Madame  de  Rochefide  should  try  to 
keep  the  baron  even  if  she  does  return  to  her  hus- 
band?" 

"That  is  my  affair,"  said  the  duchess.     "When 


442  BEATRIX 

one  has  but  little  to  do  with  intriguing,  one  does 
that  little—" 

"Badly,  very  badly,"  the  abbe  interrupted; 
"practice  is  necessary  in  everything.  Try  to  kid- 
nap one  of  the  wretched  creatures  who  pass  their 
lives  in  intrigue,  and  employ  him  without  showing 
yourself." 

"Ah!  Monsieur  le  Cure,  if  we  make  use  of  hell, 
will  heaven  be  on  our  side?" 

"You  are  not  at  confession,"  the  abbe  repeated; 
"save  your  child!" 

The  good  duchess,  enchanted  with  her  cure,  es- 
corted him  as  far  as  the  door  of  the  salon. 


A  tempest  was  rumbling,  as  we  see,  over  the  head 
of  Monsieur  de  Rochefide,  who  was  enjoying,  at  that 
moment,  the  greatest  happiness  that  a  Parisian  can 
desire,  for  he  was  quite  as  much  Madame  Schontz's 
husband  as  Beatrix's;  and,  as  the  duke  had  wisely 
remarked  to  his  wife,  it  seemed  impossible  to  dis- 
turb such  a  delightful,  complete  existence. 

This  presumption  leads  us  to  give  some  slight  de- 
tails as  to  the  life  Monsieur  de  Rochefide  had  led 
since  his  wife  had  transformed  him  into  a  deserted 
husband.  Then  it  will  be  easy  to  understand  the 
enormous  difference  in  the  mode  of  treatment  which 
our  laws  and  our  moral  code  apply  to  the  same  situ- 
ation in  the  two  sexes.  Everything  that  brings 
disaster  to  a  deserted  wife  tends  to  promote  the  hap- 
piness of  a  deserted  husband.  This  striking  con- 
trast may  inspire  in  more  than  one  young  wife  the 
determination  to  remain  at  home,  as  Sabine  du 
Guenic  did,  and  fight  the  battle  there,  employing 
at  her  choice  the  most  deadly  or  the  most  inoffensive 
qualities. 

Some  few  days  after  Beatrix's  escapade  with 
Conti,  Arthur  de  Rochefide,  who  had  become  an  only 
child  by  virtue  of  the  death,  without  heirs,  of  his  sis- 
ter. Marquis  d'Ajuda-Pinto's  first  wife,  found  himself 
proprietor  of  the  Hotel  de  Rochefide,  Rue  d'Anjou- 
Saint-Honore,  and  of  an   income  of  two  hundred 

(443) 


444  BEATRIX 

thousand  francs  left  him  by  his  father.  This  hand- 
some inheritance,  added  to  the  fortune  Arthur  pos- 
sessed when  he  married,  increased  his  income, 
including  that  from  his  wife's  fortune,  to  a  thousand 
francs  a  day.  To  a  nobleman  endowed  with  the 
character  which  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  described 
in  a  few  words  to  Calyste,  such  a  fortune  was  of 
itself  happiness.  While  his  wife  was  burdened  with 
the  cost  of  her  passion  and  her  motherhood,  Roche- 
fide  enjoyed  immense  wealth,  but  he  no  more 
squandered  it  than  he  squandered  his  wit.  His 
frank,  vulgar  vanity,  already  abundantly  satisfied 
by  a  conceited  swagger,  to  which  he  was  indebted 
for  some  successes  that  he  appealed  to  in  justifica- 
tion of  his  contempt  for  women,  imparted  an  equal 
amount  of  self-assurance  to  his  bearing  in  the 
domain  of  intellect 

Endowed  with  that  sort  of  wit  which  we  must  call 
reflective,  he  appropriated  the  bright  sallies  of 
others  in  plays  and  newspaper  by  dint  of  saying 
them  over  and  over  again ;  he  seemed  to  be  making 
sport  of  them,  he  repeated  them  perfunctorily,  he 
applied  them  as  formulas  of  criticism;  his  military 
joviality,  too — he  had  served  in  the  Garde  Royale 
— seasoned  his  conversation  so  opportunely,  that 
unintelligent  women  proclaimed  him  a  clever  man, 
and  the  others  dared  not  contradict  them.  This 
system  Arthur  pursued  in  everything;  he  was  in- 
debted to  nature  for  the  very  convenient  genius  of 
mimicry  without  making  a  monkey  of  himself;  he 
mimicked  with  a  sober  face.     And  so,  although  he 


BEATRIX  445 

had  no  taste,  he  was  always  the  first  to  adopt  and 
to  abandon  a  fashion.  Although  accused  of  passing 
a  little  too  much  time  at  his  toilet  and  of  wearing 
corsets,  he  was  a  perfect  type  of  the  man  who  never 
offends  anybody  because  he  constantly  espouses 
everybody's  ideas  and  follies,  and  who,  being 
always  mounted  upon  circumstance,  never  grows 
old. 

Such  men  are  the  heroes  of  mediocrity.  This 
husband  was  pitied;  it  was  said  that  Beatrix 
had  done  an  unpardonable  thing  in  leaving  the 
best  fellow  in  the  world,  and  ridicule  assailed  the 
wife  alone.  A  member  of  all  the  clubs,  a  sub- 
scriber to  all  the  absurd  undertakings  promoted  by 
misdirected  patriotism  or  party  spirit — an  obliging 
trait,  which  caused  him  to  be  placed  in  the  front 
row  on  all  occasions — this  loyal,  worthy  and  very 
foolish  nobleman,  whom  unhappily  so  many  rich 
men  resemble,  was  certain,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
to  be  fired  with  the  ambition  to  distinguish  himself 
by  some  fashionable  mania.  He  vaunted  himself 
principally  therefore  upon  being  the  sultan  of  a  se- 
raglio of  quadrupeds,  governed  by  an  old  English 
groom,  which  absorbed  from  four  to  five  thousand 
francs  a  month.  His  specialty  consisted  in  racing ; 
he  patronized  the  equine  race,  he  supported  a  review 
devoted  to  the  interests  of  horse-racing;  but  his 
knowledge  of  horses  was  very  limited,  and  he  relied 
upon  his  groom  for  everything,  from  reins  to  shoes. 

Suffice  it  to  say  that  this  ^M^s/-bachelor  had 
nothing  of  his  own,  neither  his  wit,  nor  his  taste, 


446  BEATRIX 

nor  his  position,  nor  iiis  absurdities ;  even  his  for- 
tune came  to  him  from  his  fathers!  After  having 
tasted  all  the  disenchantments  of  married  life,  he 
was  so  well  content  to  find  himself  once  more  a 
bachelor,  that  he  said  to  his  friends:  "I  was  born 
under  a  lucky  star!"  He  was  especially  pleased  to 
be  relieved  from  the  expense  of  the  outside  show 
which  married  men  are  bound  to  keep  up,  and  his 
house  in  Paris,  in  which  he  had  made  no  changes 
since  his  father's  death,  resembled  the  houses  whose 
owners  are  traveling  abroad:  he  passed  but  little 
time  there,  never  took  his  meals  and  rarely  slept 
there.     The  explanation  of  this  neglect  follows. 

After  many  love  intrigues,  having  had  his  fill  of 
society  women,  who  are  genuinely  wearisome  and 
who  plant  too  many  hedges  of  dry  thorns  around 
their  favors,  he  had,  as  we  shall  see,  married  the 
illustrious  Madame  Schontz,  illustrious  in  the  social 
circle  of  the  Fanny  Beaupres,  the  Suzanne  de  Val- 
Nobles,  the  Mariettes,  the  Florentines,  the  Jenny 
Cadines,  etc.  That  circle,  of  which  one  of  our 
artists  said,  pointing  to  the  whirling  mass  at  the 
Bal  de  I' Opera:  "When  we  think  that  all  those 
creatures  are  well  lodged,  well  dressed  and  well  fed, 
it  gives  us  a  fine  idea  of  man!"  that  redoubtable 
circle  has  already  made  an  irruption  into  this  his- 
tory of  manners  and  morals  in  the  typical  figures  of 
Florine  in  A  Daughter  of  Eve,  and  the  illustrious 
Malaga  in  The  Pretended  Mistress ;  but,  in  order  to 
represent  it  faithfully,  the  historian  should  make 
the  number  of  such  personages  proportionate  to  the 


BEATRIX  447 

diverse  terminations  of  their  strange  lives,  which 
end  in  indigence  in  its  most  ghastly  form,  in  pre- 
mature death,  in  comfortable  circumstances,  in 
happy  marriages,  and  sometimes  in  opulence. 

Madame  Schontz,  who  was  at  first  known  by  the 
name  of  La  Petite  Aurelie,  to  distinguish  her  from 
one  of  her  rivals  much  less  clever  than  she,  belonged 
to  the  highest  class  of  those  women  whose  social 
utility  cannot  be  called  in  question  by  the  prefect 
of  the  Seine  or  by  those  people  who  interest  them- 
selves in  the  prosperity  of  the  city  of  Paris.  Cer- 
tainly the  rat  accused  of  demolishing  fortunes  that 
are  often  hypothetical  is  more  nearly  akin  to  the 
beaver.  If  it  were  not  for  the  Aspasias  of  Quartier 
Notre-Dame  de  Lorette,  there  would  be  fewer  houses 
built  in  Paris.  Pioneers  of  new  buildings  in  plaster 
and  stucco,  they  coast  along  the  hillsides  of  Mont- 
martre,  in  tow  of  speculation,  driving  the  picket  of 
their  tents,  be  it  said  without  metaphor,  into  those 
solitudes  of  carved  ashlar  that  line  the  streets  of 
Amsterdam,  Milan,  Stockholm,  London  and  Moscow 
— architectural  steppes  where  innumerable  signs 
creak  and  groan  in  the  wind,  betraying  the  empti- 
ness within  by  these  words:  Rooms  to  let! 

The  pecuniary  condition  of  these  ladies  is  deter- 
mined by  their  location  in  these  apocryphal  quar- 
ters: if  their  houses  are  near  the  line  of  the  Rue 
de  Provence  extended,  they  have  property  in  the 
funds,  their  budgets  are  in  a  prosperous  condition; 
but  if  a  woman  ascends  toward  the  line  of  the  outer 
boulevards,  toward  the   horrifying  community  of 


448  BEATRIX 

Batignolles,  she  is  penniless.  Now,  when  Mon- 
sieur de  Rochefide  fell  in  with  Madame  Schontz,  she 
occupied  the  third  floor  of  the  only  house  then  in 
existence  upon  Rue  de  Berlin,  so  that  she  was 
encamped  upon  the  boundary  line  between  misery 
and  Paris. 

This  unmarried  wife's  name  was,  as  you  have 
probably  foreseen,  neither  Schontz  nor  Aurelie! 
She  concealed  the  name  of  her  father,  who  was  an 
old  soldier  of  the  Empire,  the  everlasting  colonel 
who  figures  at  the  outset  of  the  existences  of  most 
of  these  women,  either  as  father  or  as  seducer.  Ma- 
dame Schontz  had  enjoyed  the  privilege  of  being 
educated  gratuitously  at  Saint-Denis,  where  young 
women  are  given  an  admirable  education,  but  are 
provided  with  neither  a  husband  nor  a  market  when 
they  leave  the  school,  a  most  excellent  creation  of  the 
Emperor,  which  lacks  but  one  thing:  the  Emperor! 

"I  shall  be  there  to  provide  for  the  daughters  of 
my  legionaries,"  he  replied  when  one  of  his  minis- 
ters referred  to  the  possibilities  of  the  future.  Na- 
poleon had  also  said:  "I  shall  be  there!"  in 
reference  to  the  members  of  the  Institute,  who  were 
destined  to  receive  no  other  advantages  than  a 
xemitiSinceQi  eighty-three  francs  "(iex  month,  a  smaller 
salary  than  that  of  many  office  boys. 

Aurelie  was  really  the  daughter  of  the  gallant 
Colonel  Schiltz,  an  officer  of  the  audacious  Alsatian 
guerrillas  who  almost  saved  the  Emperor  in  the 
French  campaign ;  he  died  at  Metz,  pillaged,  robbed 
and  ruined.    In  1814  Napoleon  placed  little  Josephine 


BEATRIX  449 

Schiltz,  then  nine  years  old,  at  Saint-Denis.  Having 
no  father  or  mother,  no  friends  and  no  money,  the 
poor  child  was  not  turned  out  of  the  establishment 
at  the  second  return  of  the  Bourbons.  She  was  an 
under-mistress  there  up  to  1827;  but  at  that  time 
her  patience  was  exhausted  and  her  beauty  fasci- 
nated her. 

When  she  attained  her  majority,  Josephine 
Schiltz,  the  Empress's  goddaughter,  first  tasted  the 
adventurous  life  of  the  courtesan,  beguiled  into  that 
doubtful  career  by  the  fatal  example  of  some  of  her 
comrades,  penniless  like  herself,  who  congratulated 
themselves  upon  the  step  they  had  taken.  She 
substituted  an  on  for  the  //  in  her  father's  name  and 
placed  herself  under  the  patronage  of  Sainte  Aurelie. 
Being  of  a  sprightly  disposition,  clever  and  well  in- 
formed, she  sinned  far  more  than  her  duller  compan- 
ions, whose  transgressions  were  always  founded  on 
self-interest.  After  divers  experiences  with  poor 
but  dishonest,  clever  but  debt-ridden  authors ;  after 
she  had  tried  several  rich  men,  who  were  as  parsi- 
monious as  foolish ;  after  sacrificing  solid  advantages 
to  true  love,  and  making  trial  of  all  the  schools  in 
which  experience  is  acquired, — on  a  certain  day 
when  she  was  in  the  last  stages  of  destitution  and 
was  dancing  at  Valentino's, — the  first  station  on  the 
road  to  Musard, — dressed  in  a  borrowed  dress  and 
hat  and  cape,  she  attracted  Arthur's  attention,  who 
had  dropped  in  to  see  the  famous  galop !  That  gen- 
tleman, who  was  at  a  loss  to  know  what  passion  to 
take  up,  was  fascinated  by  her  wit;  and,  at  that 
29 


450  BEATRIX 

time,  two  years  after  his  desertion  by  Beatrix, 
whose  intellectual  powers  often  humiliated  him,  no 
one  blamed  the  marquis  for  marrying  a  second-hand 
Beatrix  in  the  thirteenth  arrondissement* 

Let  us  at  this  point  glance  cursorily  at  the  four 
seasons  of  this  form  of  bliss.  It  is  necessary  to 
point  out  that  the  theory  of  marriage  in  the  thir- 
teenth arrondissement  applies  equally  to  all  classes. 
You  may  be  a  marquis  of  forty,  or  a  retired  shop- 
keeper of  sixty,  six  times  a  millionaire  or  an  annu- 
itant— See  A  Start  in  Life,— great  nobleman  or 
bourgeois,  the  strategy  of  passion,  making  allow- 
ance for  the  differences  inherent  in  the  different 
social  strata,  varies  but  little.  The  heart  and  the 
money-box  always  maintain  exact  and  definite  rela- 
tions. You  may  judge,  therefore,  the  difficulties  the 
duchess  was  likely  to  encounter  in  the  execution  of 
her  charitable  plan. 

No  one  has  an  idea  of  the  influence  of  epigram- 
matic phrases  upon  ordinary  people  in  France,  nor 
how  much  harm  is  done  by  the  witty  men  who  in- 
vent them.  For  instance,  no  bookkeeper  could 
compute  the  total  amount  of  the  sums  that  have 
been  left  lying,  unproductive,  at  the  bottom  of  gen- 
erous hearts  and  money-boxes,  kept  under  lock  and 
key  because  of  the  vulgar  phrase :  Tirer  une  carotte  !  f 
— This  phrase  has  acquired  such  vogue  that  we  must 

*  The  expression  marriage  in  the  tbirleentb  arrondissement,  was  Invented  at  a 
time  when  there  were  but  twelve  arrondissements  In  Paris,  to  signify  living 
with  a  mistress. 

t  Tirer  une  earottt—to  obtain  something  from  someone  by  clever  manage- 
ment or  strateg^y. 


BEATRIX  45 1 

permit  it  to  soil  this  page.  Moreover,  if  we  go  into 
the  thirteenth  arrondissement,  we  must  accept  its 
picturesque  patois. 

Monsieur  de  Rochefide,  like  all  petty  minds,  was 
always  afraid  of  being  carotti. — A  verb  has  been 
formed  from  the  noun. — From  the  beginning  of  his 
passion  for  Madame  Schontz,  Arthur  was  on  his 
guard,  and  was  considered  very  much  of  a  rat,  to 
have  recourse  to  another  expression  of  the  studios 
of  debauchery  and  of  the  artists'  studios.  The  word 
raty  when  applied  to  a  young  girl,  signifies  a  jolly 
companion,  but  when  applied  to  a  man,  it  means  a 
niggardly  host 

Madame  Schontz  was  too  clever  and  knew  men 
too  well  not  to  conceive  the  greatest  hopes  from 
such  a  beginning.  Monsieur  de  Rochfide  allowed  her 
five  hundred  francs  a  month,  furnished  shabbily  a 
second  floor  apartment,  rented  at  twelve  hundred 
francs,  on  Rue  Coquenard,  and  set  about  studying 
the  character  of  his  Aurelie,  who  furnished  him  with 
a  character  to  study  as  soon  as  she  became  aware  of 
his  espionage.  Rochefide  was  very  much  pleased 
to  have  fallen  in  with  a  girl  endowed  with  such  a 
fine  character,  but  he  saw  nothing  to  be  astonished 
at :  her  mother  was  a  Barnheim  de  Bade,  a  comme 
il  faut  person!  And  Aurelie  had  been  so  well 
brought  up  too ! — As  she  knew  English,  German  and 
Italian,  she  was  thoroughly  versed  in  the  literature 
of  those  countries.  She  could  contend  on  even  terms 
with  pianists  of  the  second  order.  And  mark  this ! 
she  conducted  herself  with  regard  to  her  talents,  as 


452  BEATRIX 

any  well-bred  person  would — she  never  mentioned 
them.  She  would  take  up  a  brush  at  a  painter's 
studio,  put  it  to  the  canvas  as  a  joke,  and  produce  a 
head  so  handily  as  to  cause  general  amazement. 
While  she  was  pining  away  as  under-mistress,  she 
had  put  out  a  feeler  or  two  in  the  domain  of  science, 
merely  as  a  pastime;  but  her  life  as  a  kept  mistress 
had  covered  these  promising  seeds  with  a  cloak  of 
salt,  and  naturally  she  gave  her  Arthur  the  credit 
for  the  fructification  of  the  precious  germs,  culti- 
vated anew  for  him. 

Aurelie  began,  therefore,  by  displaying  a  disinter- 
estedness equal  to  the  voluptuous  charm  which 
made  it  possible  for  the  little  corvette  to  attach  her 
grappling  irons  firmly  to  the  great  three-decker. 
Nevertheless,  toward  the  end  of  the  first  year,  she 
began  to  make  outrageous  noises  with  her  heavy 
shoes  in  the  antechamber,  as  a  preliminary  to 
entering  the  room  where  the  marquis  was  awaiting 
her ;  and  she  would  conceal,  in  such  a  way  as  to 
show  it  perfectly,  the  skirt  of  her  dress,  shockingly 
dirty.  At  last  she  succeeded  so  completely  in  con- 
vinc'ing  her  dear  old  papa  thai  her  whole  ambition, 
after  so  many  ups  and  downs,  was  to  obtain  by 
honest  means,  a  modest  middle-class  home,  that,  ten 
months  after  their  meeting,  the  second  phase  began. 

Madame  Schontz  was  provided  with  a  handsome 
suite  on  Rue  Neuve-Saint-Georges.  As  Arthur 
could  no  longer  conceal  the  fact  of  his  great  fortune, 
he  gave  her  magnificent  furniture,  a  complete  ser- 
vice of  plate,  twelve  hundred  francs  a  month  and 


BEATRIX  453 

a  small,  low  carriage  with  one  horse, — hired,  by  the 
way, — and  he  yielded  gracefully  enough  in  the 
matter  of  a  tiger.  La  Schontz  was  in  no  wise  grate- 
ful to  him  for  this  munificence;  she  fathomed  the 
motives  of  her  Arthur's  conduct  and  detected  rat- 
like  scheming  therein.  Wearied  beyond  measure 
by  living  at  restaurants,  where  the  food  is  for  the 
most  part  execrable,  and  where  the  least  expensive 
respectable  dinner  costs  sixty  francs  for  one,  and 
two  hundred  francs  if  you  invite  three  friends, 
Rochefide  offered  Madame  Schontz  forty  francs  a 
day  for  her  own  dinner  and  a  friend's,  everything 
included.  Aurelie  knew  too  much  to  refuse.  After 
she  had  procured  the  acceptance  of  all  her  moral 
notes  of  hand,  drawn  at  one  year  upon  Monsieur  de 
Rochefide's  habits,  she  was  listened  to  with  favor 
when  she  demanded  five  hundred  francs  more  per 
month  for  her  toilet,  so  that  she  need  not  cover  her 
dear  papa  with  shame,  as  all  his  friends  belonged  to 
the  Jockey  Club. 

"It  would  be  very  pretty,"  said  she,  "if  Rasti- 
gnac,  Maxime  de  Trailles,  D'Esgrignon,  La  Roche- 
Hugon,  Ronquerolles,  Laginski,  Lenoncourt  and  the 
rest  should  find  you  with  a  Madame  Everard !  Just 
have  confidence  in  me,  old  man,  and  you  will  be  the 
gainer!" 

In  truth,  Aurelie  took  measures  to  display  new 
accomplishments  in  this  new  phase.  She  drew  a 
picture  of  herself  in  the  r61e  of  housekeeper,  which 
served  her  purpose  admirably.  With  twenty-five 
hundred  francs  a  month,  she  said,  she  would  make 


454  BEATRIX 

the  ends  of  the  month  meet  without  debts, — a  thing 
that  was  never  seen  in  the  Faubourg  Saint-Germain 
of  the  thirteenth  arrondissement,  and  she  would 
give  dinners  infinitely  superior  to  Nucingen's  and 
would  serve  exquisite  wine  at  ten  and  twelve  francs 
the  bottle.  Rochefide,  filled  with  admiration,  and 
very  well  pleased  to  be  able  to  invite  his  friends  to 
his  mistress's  as  often  as  he  pleased,  for  it  seemed 
to  him  an  economical  plan,  said  as  he  put  his  arm 
about  her  waist : 

"What  a  treasure  you  are!" 

Soon  he  hired  a  third  of  a  box  at  the  Italiens  for 
her  and  ended  by  taking  her  to  all  the  first  nights. 
Recognizing  the  excellence  of  his  Aurelie's  advice, 
he  began  to  consult  her,  and  she  allowed  him  to 
appropriate  the  clever  remarks  she  made  on  all  oc- 
casions, which,  being  quite  new,  increased  his  rep- 
utation as  an  entertaining  man.  At  last  he  acquired 
the  certainty  that  she  loved  him  truly  and  for  him- 
self. Aurelie  refused  to  accept  the  attentions  of  a 
Russian  prince  at  a  monthly  stipend  of  five  thou- 
sand francs. 

"You're  a  lucky  dog,  my  dear  marquis,"  cried 
old  Prince  Galathionne,  at  the  conclusion  of  a  game 
of  whist  at  the  club.  "Yesterday,  when  you  left 
Madame  Schontz  and  myself  alone,  I  tried  to  sup- 
plant you;  but  she  said  to  me:  'My  prince,  you 
are  no  handsomer,  but  you  are  older  than  Rochefide ; 
you  would  beat  me  and  he  is  like  a  father  to  me; 
show  me  the  fourth  part  of  a  reason  for  changing! 
I  haven't  the  mad  passion  for  Arthur  that  I  have 


BEATRIX  455 

had  for  the  little  fools  with  varnished  boots,  whose 
debts  I  used  to  pay ;  but  I  love  him  as  a  virtuous 
wife  loves  her  husband.  *  And  she  showed  me  the 
door." 

This  discourse,  which  had  no  flower  of  humbug, 
resulted  in  adding  enormously  to  the  condition  of 
neglect  and  degradation  that  dishonored  the  Hotel 
de  Rochefide.  Arthur  soon  passed  all  his  time  and 
enjoyed  all  his  pleasures  at  Madame  Schontz's,  and 
very  much  to  his  advantage  he  found  it ;  for,  at  the 
end  of  three  years,  he  had  four  hundred  thousand 
francs  to  invest. 

The  third  phase  began.  Madame  Schontz  became 
the  most  affectionate  of  mothers  to  Arthur's  son,  she 
went  to  his  college  to  fetch  him  and  took  him  back 
herself ;  she  overwhelmed  the  child  with  sweetmeats 
and  toys  and  money,  and  he  called  her  his  little 
mamma  and  worshiped  her.  She  took  a  hand  in 
the  management  of  her  Arthur's  fortune,  she  made 
him  purchase  consols  at  a  low  figure  just  before  the 
famous  Treaty  of  London  which  overthrew  the  min- 
istry of  the  first  of  March.  Arthur  made  two  hun- 
dred thousand  francs,  and  Aurelie  did  not  ask  for  a 
sou.  Like  the  gentleman  he  was,  Rochefide  invested 
his  six  hundred  thousand  francs  in  shares  of  the 
Bank,  and  put  half  of  them  in  the  name  of  Made- 
moiselle Josephine  Schiltz.  A  small  house  on  Rue 
de  la  Bruy^re  was  hired  and  put  in  the  hands  of 
Grindot,  the  great  architect  in  small  matters,  with 
orders  to  make  of  it  a  sumptuous  bonbonnQre. 
Thenceforward  Rochefide  had   no  money  dealings 


45<5  BEATRIX 

with  Madame  Schontz,  who  received  her  own  rev- 
enues and  paid  the  bills. 

Having  become  his  wife — on  trust — she  justified 
the  title  by  making  her  dear  papa  happier  than 
ever ;  she  had  learned  his  whims  and  gratified  them, 
as  Madame  de  Pompadour  gratified  the  whims  of 
Louis  XV.  She  was  at  last  titular  mistress,  abso- 
lute mistress.  Thereupon,  she  took  the  liberty  of 
patronizing  charming  young  men,  artists,  men  of 
letters  newly  born  to  glory,  who  denied  both 
ancients  and  moderns,  and  tried  to  make  great  repu- 
tations for  themselves  while  doing  little  or  nothing. 

Madame  Schontz's  conduct,  a  masterpiece  of  clever 
tactics,  should  make  plain  to  you  her  superior  under- 
standing. In  the  first  place,  ten  or  twelve  young 
men  entertained  Arthur,  furnished  him  with  shafts 
of  wit,  with  shrewd  opinions  upon  all  sorts  of  sub- 
jects, and  did  not  throw  suspicion  on  the  fidelity  of 
the  mistress  of  the  house;  in  the  second  place, 
they  looked  upon  her  as  an  eminently  clever  woman. 
Thus  these  living  advertisements,  these  peripatetic 
newspaper  articles,  caused  Madame  Schontz  to  be 
known  as  the  most  agreeable  woman  to  be  found 
along  the  line  that  separates  the  thirteenth  arron- 
dissement  from  the  other  twelve.  Her  rivals, 
Suzanne  Gaillard,  who,  after  1838,  had  the  advan- 
tage over  her  of  having  become  a  wife  by  a  lawful 
marriage — necessary  pleonasm  to  describe  an  insol- 
uble, legitimate  alliance — Fanny  Beaupre,  Mariette, 
Antonia,  spread  reports  more  slanderous  than 
amusing,  concerning  the  beauty  of  these  young  men 


BEATRIX  457 

and  Monsieur  de  Rochefide's  good-natured  treatment 
of  them. 

Madame  Schontz,  who  could  distance  by  three 
blagues,  she  said,  the  collective  wit  of  those  ladies, 
said  to  them  one  evening  at  a  supper  party  given  by 
Nathan  at  Florine's  house,  after  the  Bal  de  I'Opera, 
having  explained  to  them  her  fortune  and  her  suc- 
cess: "Do  the  same  yourselves!" — a  remark  which 
they  remembered. 

During  that  period,  Madame  Schontz  caused  the 
race-horses  to  be  sold,  influenced  by  considerations 
for  which  she  was  indebted  in  all  probability  to  the 
critical  mind  of  Claude  Vignon,  one  of  her  intimates. 

"I  can  understand,"  she  said  one  evening,  after 
she  had  lashed  the  horses  with  satirical  remarks  for 
a  long  while,  "that  princes  and  very  rich  men 
might  become  fond  of  horse-racing,  but  for  the  pur- 
pose of  promoting  the  welfare  of  the  country  and 
not  to  satisfy  the  puerile  whims  of  a  gambler's  con- 
ceit If  you  had  breeding  establishments  on  your 
estates,  if  you  raised  ten  or  twelve  hundred  horses 
every  year,  if  everyone  raced  the  best  horses  in  his 
stud,  if  all  the  studs  in  France  and  Navarre  took 
part  in  every  function,  it  would  be  a  fine,  grand 
thing;  but  you  buy  horses,  just  as  theatre  managers 
make  contracts  with  actors,  you  degrade  an  institu- 
tion until  it  is  nothing  but  a  gambling  affair,  you 
have  a  Bourse  for  dealing  in  legs  just  as  you  have 
a  Bourse  for  consols!  It  isn't  worthy  of  you.  I 
suppose  you  spend  sixty  thousand  francs  for  the 
pleasure  of  reading  in  the  newspapers:  Monsieur 


458  BEATRIX 

de  Rochefide's  LELIA  won  from  Monsieur  le  Due 
de  Rhetore's  Fleur-DE-Genet  by  a  length?— It 
would  be  much  better  to  give  that  money  to  the 
poets,  and  they  would  send  you  to  immortality  in 
verse  or  prose,  like  the  late  lamented  Montyon!" 

The  marquis  was  at  last  goaded  into  realizing  the 
ravages  of  the  turf,  and  the  possibility  of  econo- 
mizing to  the  extent  of  sixty  thousand  francs;  so 
that  Madame  Schontz  said  to  him  the  following  year : 

"I  don't  cost  you  anything  now,  Arthur!" 

Many  rich  men  envied  the  marquis  the  possession 
of  Madame  Schontz  at  this  time,  and  tried  to  take 
her  from  him;  but,  like  the  Russian  prince,  their 
old  age  was  wasted  upon  her. 

"Listen,  my  dear  fellow,"  said  she  to  Finot,  who 
had  become  very  wealthy,  "I  am  sure  that  Roche- 
fide  would  forgive  me  a  wee  bit  of  a  passion  if  I 
should  fall  madly  in  love  with  anyone,  and  no 
woman  ever  leaves  a  marquis  who's  such  a  good 
fellow  as  that  for  a  parvenu  like  you.  You  could 
not  keep  me  in  the  position  Arthur  has  given  me ; 
he  has  made  a  half  comme  ilfaui  woman  of  me,  and 
you  could  never  do  that  even  by  marrying  me." 

This  was  the  last  nail  that  riveted  the  irons  upon 
the  lucky  galley-slave.  The  words  reached  the  ab- 
sent ears  for  which  they  were  intended. 

Thereupon  began  the  fourth  phase,  that  of  habit, 
the  final  victory  of  these  carefully  planned  cam- 
paigns, which  causes  a  woman  of  this  sort  to  say  of 
a  man:     "I  have  him  now!" 

Rochefide,  who  had  just  purchased  the  little  house 


BEATRIX  459 

in  the  name  of  Mademoiselle  Josephine  Schiltz — a 
trifle  of  eighty  thousand  francs — had,  at  the  time 
the  duchess's  project  took  shape,  reached  the  point 
of  being  vain  of  his  mistress,  whom  he  called 
Ninon  II.,  commemorating  thus  her  unbending 
probity,  her  excellent  manners,  her  knowledge  and 
her  wit  His  good  and  bad  qualities,  his  tastes  and 
his  pleasures  were  all  summed  up  in  Madame 
Schontz,  and  he  had  reached  that  time  of  life  when, 
whether  through  weariness  or  indifference  or  phil- 
osophy, a  man  ceases  to  change,  and  clings  to  his 
wife  or  his  mistress,  as  the  case  may  be. 

The  position  acquired  in  five  years  by  Madame 
Schontz  will  be  realized  when  we  say  that  in  order 
to  be  presented  to  her,  it  was  necessary  that  one's 
name  should  be  proposed  a  long  while  beforehand. 
She  had  refused  to  receive  tiresome  rich  men  and 
men  with  unsavory  reputations;  she  relaxed  her 
rigorous  policy  in  favor  of  none  but  the  great  names 
of  the  aristocracy. 

"They  have  the  right  to  be  donkeys,"  she  would 
say,  "because  they  are  comme  ilfaut  donkeys!" 

She  possessed,  ostensibly,  the  three  hundred  thou- 
sand francs  given  her  by  Rochefide,  which  a  broker 
and  good  fellonxiy  Gobenheim — the  only  one  of  his 
trade  who  was  admitted  to  her  house — invested  for 
her;  but  she  handled  with  her  own  hands  a  little 
secret  fortune  of  two  hundred  thousand  francs  con- 
sisting of  what  she  had  saved  in  three  years,  and  of 
the  profits  accruing  from  the  constant  turning  over 
of  the  three  hundred  thousand  francs,  which  she  was 


460  BEATRIX 

known  to  possess,  for  she  never  admitted  the  exist- 
ence of  any  more  than  that  sum. 

"The  more  you  make,  the  poorer  you  grow," 
Gobenheim  said  to  her  one  day. 

"Water  is  so  dear!"  she  retorted. 

The  amount  of  the  hidden  treasure  was  increased 
by  the  value  of  jewels  and  diamonds,  which  she 
would  wear  for  a  month  and  then  sell,  and  by  sums 
given  her  in  payment  for  past  caprices.  When  peo- 
ple called  her  rich,  Madame  Schontz  replied  that  at 
the  rate  of  interest  paid  on  consols,  three  hundred 
thousand  francs  yielded  twelve  thousand  a  year, 
and  that  she  had  spent  as  much  as  that  in  her  most 
destitute  days,  when  she  loved  Lousteau. 

This  line  of  conduct  indicated  a  definite  plan,  and 
such  a  plan  Madame  Schontz  had,  you  may  be  sure. 
She  had  been  jealous  for  two  years  of  Madame  de 
Bruel  and  was  consumed  with  ambition  to  be  mar- 
ried at  the  mayor's  office  and  the  church.  All 
social  ranks  have  their  forbidden  fruit,  a  mere  trifle, 
developed  by  desire  until  it  is  as  heavy  as  the  world. 

This  ambition  was  necessarily  increased  twofold 
by  the  ambition  of  a  second  Arthur,  whom  no 
amount  of  watching  could  discover.  Bixiou  insisted 
that  the  favored  individual  was  the  painter  Leon  de 
Lora,  the  painter  would  have  it  that  it  was  Bixiou, 
who  was  past  forty  and  should  have  been  thinking 
of  settling  down.  Suspicion  also  fell  upon  Victor  de 
Vernisset,  a  young  poet  of  the  school  of  Canal  is, 
whose  passion  for  Madame  Schontz  amounted  to  de- 
lirium ;  and  the  poet  accused  Stidmann,  a  sculptor, 


BEATRIX  461 

of  being  his  fortunate  rival.  This  last-named  artist, 
a  very  pretty  fellow,  worked  for  the  goldsmiths, 
the  dealers  in  bronzes  and  the  jewelers;  he  aspired 
to  be  a  second  Benvenuto  Cellini.  Claude  Vignon, 
the  young  Comte  de  la  Palferine,  Gobenheim,  Ver- 
manton,  a  cynical  philosopher,  and  other  habitues 
of  this  attractive  salon,  were  brought  under  suspi- 
cion one  by  one,  and  acquitted.  No  one  of  them  all 
was  the  equal  of  Madame  Schontz,  not  even  Roche- 
fide,  who  believed  that  she  had  a  weakness  for  the 
young  and  clever  La  Palferine ;  she  was  virtuous  by 
design,  and  was  thinking  of  nothing  but  making 
an  advantageous  marriage. 

Only  one  man  of  doubtful  reputation  was  to  be 
seen  at  Madame  Schontz's;  that  man  was  Couture, 
who  had  more  than  once  made  the  operators  on  the 
Bourse  howl ;  but  Couture  was  one  of  Madame 
Schontz's  first  friends,  and  she  alone  was  faithful  to 
him.  The  false  alarm  of  1840  spirited  away  the 
last  remaining  capital  of  this  speculator,  who  be- 
lieved in  the  adroitness  of  the  first  of  March  minis- 
try; Aurelie,  seeing  that  he  was  depressed,  made 
Rochefide  take  a  turn  on  the  other  side  of  the 
market,  as  we  have  seen.  She  it  was  who  dubbed 
this  last  disaster  of  the  inventor  of  premiums  and 
limited  liability  companies,  a  decouture. 

Overjoyed  to  find  his  cover  always  laid  at 
Aurelie's,  Couture,  to  whom  Finot,  the  shrewdest, 
or,  if  you  please,  the  luckiest  of  all  parvenus,  gave 
a  thousand-franc  note  from  time  to  time,  was  the 
only  man  who  was  sufficiently  far-seeing  to  offer 


462  BEATRIX 

Madame  Schontz  his  name ;  whereupon  she  made  a 
study  of  him,  to  ascertain  whether  the  bold  specu- 
lator had  the  power  to  hew  out  a  path  for  himself  in 
politics,  and  sufficient  gratitude  not  to  desert  his 
wife.  Couture  was  a  man  of  about  forty-three 
years,  very  badly  used  up,  whose  birth  did  not  re- 
deem the  evil  notoriety  of  his  name;  he  seldom 
spoke  of  the  authors  of  his  being. 

Madame  Schontz  was  bewailing  the  scarcity  of 
capable  men,  when  Couture  himself  presented  to 
her  a  provincial  who  was  furnished  with  the  two 
handles  by  which  women  take  hold  of  jugs  of  this 
sort  when  they  intend  to  keep  them. 

To  sketch  this  personage  will  be  to  describe  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  youth  of  the  present  day. 
In  this  instance,  therefore,  the  digression  will  be 
history. 

In  1838,  Fabien  du  Ronceret,  the  son  of  a  President 
of  one  of  the  divisions  of  the  Royal  Court  of  Caen 
who  had  died  a  year  before,  left  the  city  of  Alenfon 
after  resigning  his  position  as  magistrate  in  which  his 
father  had  compelled  him  to  throw  away  his  time, 
as  he  said, — and  came  to  Paris  with  the  purpose  of 
making  his  way,  there  by  dint  of  creating  a  sensa- 
tion; a  Norman  idea,  difficult  to  carry  out,  for  he 
had  barely  eight  thousand  francs  a  year,  his  mother 
being  still  alive  and  having  a  life  interest  in  a  very 
valuable  piece  of  real  estate  in  the  centre  of  Alencon. 
The  young  man  had,  in  several  previous  trips  to 
Paris,  tried  the  strength  of  his  rope  as  a  mounte- 
bank, and  detected  the  great  defect  in  the  social 


BEATRIX  463 

patchwork  of  1830;  wherefore  he  expected  to  work 
it  to  his  own  profit,  following  the  example  of  the 
Machiavels  of  the  bourgeoisie.  This  calls  for  a  cur- 
sory glance  at  one  of  the  results  of  the  new  order  of 
things. 

Modern  equality,  developed  beyond  all  measure 
in  our  days,  has  necessarily  developed  in  private 
life,  upon  a  line  parallel  to  political  life,  pride,  self- 
esteem,  vanity,  the  three  great  divisions  of  the 
social  ego.  Fools  seek  to  pass  for  men  of  intelli- 
gence, men  of  intelligence  seek  to  pass  for  men  of 
talent,  men  of  talent  wish  to  be  treated  as  men  of 
genius;  as  for  the  men  of  genius,  they  are  more 
reasonable  and  consent  to  be  nothing  more  than 
demigods.  This  tendency  of  the  public  mind 
of  the  present  day,  which  sends  to  the  Cham- 
ber the  manufacturer  who  is  jealous  of  the 
statesman,  and  the  public  official  who  is  jealous  of 
the  poet,  leads  fools  to  disparage  men  of  intelligence, 
men  of  intelligence  to  disparage  men  of  talent,  men 
of  talent  to  disparage  those  of  their  number  who  gain 
an  inch  or  two  upon  them,  and  demigods  to  threaten 
existing  institutions,  the  throne,  everything  in  short 
that  does  not  fall  down  and  worship  them  uncon- 
ditionally. As  soon  as  a  nation  has,  very  unwisely, 
beaten  down  all  recognized  social  superiority,  it 
opens  flood-gates,  through  which  rushes  a  torrent  of 
secondary  ambitions,  the  very  least  of  which  is 
none  the  less  determined  to  be  first;  it  had  in  its 
aristocracy  an  evil,  so  the  democrats  say,  but  a 
well-defined,  circumscribed  evil ;  it  exchanges  it  for 


464  BEATRIX 

ten  conflicting,  armed  aristocracies,  the  most  lament- 
able of  conditions.  In  proclaiming  the  equality  of 
all  men,  the  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Envy  was 
promulgated.  We  are  enjoying  to-day  the  satur- 
nalia of  the  Revolution  transported  into  the  appa- 
rently peaceful  domain  of  intellect,  trade  and 
politics;  and  so  it  seems  that  reputations  due  to 
hard  work,  to  services  rendered,  to  talent,  are  priv- 
ileges accorded  at  the  expense  of  the  masses.  The 
Agrarian  Law  will  soon  be  extended  to  the  field  of 
glory.  Never,  at  any  time,  have  men  demanded  the 
selection  of  their  names  from  the  public  winnowing 
table  for  more  puerile  reasons.  They  strive  for 
notoriety  at  any  price,  by  making  themselves  ridicu- 
lous, by  affecting  devotion  to  the  cause  of  Poland, 
to  the  penitentiary  system,  to  the  question  of  the 
future  of  liberated  convicts,  to  little  sinners  above 
or  below  the  age  of  twelve,  to  all  forms  of  social 
misery.  These  divers  manias  require  the  creation 
of  posts  of  sham  dignity, — presidents,  vice-presi- 
dents and  secretaries  of  societies  exceeding  in 
number,  in  Paris,  the  social  problems  they  are  seek- 
ing to  solve.  The  great  social  body  has  been 
demolished  to  construct  innumerable  little  ones  after 
the  image  of  the  defunct.  Do  not  these  parasitic 
organizations  indicate  decomposition  ?  is  it  not  the 
swarming  of  worms  toward  the  corpse  ?  All  these 
social  bodies  are  daughters  of  the  same  mother,  van- 
ity. Not  thus  do  Catholic  charity  or  genuine 
benevolence  proceed;  they  study  the  evils  at  the 
fountain   head   and   apply  remedies,   and  do   not 


BEATRIX  465 

declaim  in  public  upon  morbific  germs  for  the  pleas- 
ure of  declaiming. 

Fabien  du  Ronceret,  although  he  was  not  a  man 
of  superior  capacity,  had  divined  by  the  exercise  of 
the  miserly  talent  peculiar  to  Normandie,  all  the 
profit  he  might  reap  from  this  public  vice.  Every 
epoch  has  its  special  characteristics  which  adroit 
men  turn  to  account  Fabien  thought  only  of  mak- 
ing people  talk  about  him. 

"My  dear  fellow,  you  must  make  people  talk 
about  you  if  you  want  to  amount  to  anything!" 
he  said  to  his  father's  friend  Du  Bousquier,  the  king 
of  Alenfon,  as  he  took  leave  of  him.  "Six  months 
hence  I  shall  be  better  known  than  you!" 

Fabien  thus  translated  the  spirit  of  the  time;  he 
did  not  seek  to  dominate  it,  but  simply  obeyed  it. 
He  began  his  career  in  Bohemia,  a  district  in  the 
moral  topography  of  Paris — See  A  Prince  of  Bohemia, 
Scenes  of  Parisian  Life,— where  he  was  known 
as  The  Heify  because  of  some  premeditated  extrava- 
gances. Du  Ronceret  had  profited  by  Couture's  in- 
fatuation with  pretty  Madame  Cadine,  one  of  the 
new  actresses  who  was  considered  a  very  talented 
artist  at  one  of  the  secondary  theatres,  and  for 
whom,  during  his  ephemeral  opulence,  he  had  hired 
and  furnished  a  lovely  little  ground-floor  suite  with 
a  garden,  on  Rue  Blanche. 

Du  Ronceret  and  Couture  became  acquainted  in 

this  way.      The  Norman,  who  chose  to  take  his 

splendor  ready-made,  purchased  Couture's  furniture 

and  the  permanent  improvements  he  was  obliged 

30 


466  BEATRIX 

to  leave  in  the  establishment — a  kiosk  in  which 
they  smoked,  a  rustic  wooden  gallery,  covered  with 
Indian  matting  and  embellished  with  pottery,  by 
which  to  reach  the  kiosk  in  rainy  weather.  When 
The  Heir  was  complimented  on  his  apartment,  he 
called  it  his  den.  The  provincial  was  careful  to  say 
thatGrindot,  the  architect,  had  displayed  ail  his  cun- 
ning there,  as  Stidmann  had  in  the  sculptures  and 
Leon  de  Lora  in  the  paintings;  for  his  capital  fault 
was  that  self-esteem  which  does  not  stop  short  of 
falsehood  in  its  desire  to  aggrandize  itself. 

The  Heir  rounded  out  his  magnificence  by  a  con- 
servatory which  he  built  along  a  wall  with  a  south- 
ern exposure — not  because  he  loved  flowers,  but 
because  he  proposed  to  attack  public  opinion  through 
horticulture.  At  the  time  of  which  we  write,  he  had 
almost  attained  his  object.  Having  become  vice- 
president  of  some  horticultural  society,  presided 
over  by  the  Due  de  Wissembourg,  brother  of  the 
Prince  de  Chiavari,  younger  son  of  the  late  Mare- 
chal  Vernon,  he  had  adorned  his  vice-presidential 
coat  with  the  ribbon  of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  after 
an  exhibition,  at  which  the  opening  discourse,  pur- 
chased for  five  hundred  francs  from  Lousteau,  was 
boldly  delivered  by  him  as  the  offspring  of  his  own 
brain.  He  received  honorable  mention  for  a  flower 
which  old  Blondet  at  Alenfon,  Emile  Blondet's 
father,  had  given  him,  and  which  he  exhibited  as 
having  been  grown  in  his  greenhouse. 

This  success  was  nothing.  The  Heir,  who  as- 
pired to  be  acknowledged  as  a  man  of  mind,  had 


BEATRIX  467 

formed  the  plan  of  allying  himself  with  illustrious 
men  in  order  to  shine  in  the  reflected  light  of  their 
glory — a  plan  not  easily  put  in  execution,  when 
based  upon  a  budget  of  only  eight  thousand  francs. 
So  Fabien  du  Ronceret  applied  to  Bixiou,  Stidmann 
and  Leon  de  Lora,  one  after  another  and  unsuccess- 
fully, to  be  presented  to  Madame  Schontz  and  be- 
come one  of  her  menagerie  of  lions  of  all  species. 
He  paid  for  Couture's  dinners  so  often  that  Couture 
demonstrated  to  Madame  Schontz  categorically  that 
she  ought  to  add  such  an  original  creature  to  her 
assortment,  were  it  only  to  make  of  him  one  of 
those  fashionable  valets  without  wages  whom  the 
mistresses  of  households  employ  upon  commissions 
which  they  can  find  no  paid  servants  to  undertake. 

In  three  evenings,  Madame  Schontz  read  Fabien 
like  an  open  book,  and  said  to  herself: 

"If  Couture  doesn't  suit  me  I  am  sure  of  getting 
a  saddle  on  this  fellow.  Now,  my  future  stands  on 
two  feet!" 

Thus,  this  idiot  of  whom  everybody  made  sport 
became  the  favorite,  but  with  a  purpose  in  view  on 
Aurelie's  part  that  made  the  preference  an  insult; 
and  the  very  improbability  of  this  selection  pre- 
vented its  being  even  suspected.  Madame  Schontz 
intoxicated  Fabien  with  stealthy  smiles  and  with 
little  scenes  enacted  on  the  threshold  as  she  escorted 
him  to  the  door,  when  everybody  had  gone  save  Mon- 
sieur de  Rochefide.  She  often  made  Fabien  the 
third  with  Arthur  in  her  box  at  the  Italiens  and  at 
first  nights;  she  explained   her   action  by  saying 


468  BEATRIX 

that  he  had  rendered  her  this  or  that  service  and 
that  she  did  not  know  how  else  to  repay  him. 

Men  have  a  fatuous  ambition,  which,  by  the  way, 
they  share  with  women,  to  be  loved  absolutely. 
Now,  of  all  flattering  passions,  none  is  more  highly 
prized  than  that  of  a  Madame  Schontz  for  him  she 
honors  with  a  love  called  heart-love,  to  distinguish 
it  from  the  other  variety.  A  woman  like  Madame 
Schontz,  who  played  at  being  a  great  lady,  and  who 
was  really  a  superior  woman,  should  have  been  and 
was  a  subject  of  pride  to  Fabien,  who  became  en- 
amored of  her  to  such  a  degree  that  he  never  pre- 
sented himself  before  her  except  in  full  dress,  with 
varnished  boots,  straw-colored  gloves,  frilled  and 
embroidered  shirt,  waistcoats  more  and  more  elab- 
orate,— in  short  with  all  the  symptoms  of  profound 
adoration.  A  month  prior  to  the  duchess's  confer- 
ence with  her  spiritual  director,  Madame  Schontz 
had  confided  the  secret  of  her  birth  and  her  real 
name  to  Fabien,  who  did  not  understand  the  object 
of  the  confidence.  A  fortnight  later,  Madame 
Schontz,  amazed  at  the  Norman's  lack  of  intelli- 
gence, exclaimed: 

"What  an  idiot  I  am!  he  fancies  that  I  love  him 
for  himself!" 

And  she  thereupon  took  The  Heir  .to  the  Bois  in 
her  caliche — for  she  had  had  for  a  year  past,  a  little 
caliche  and  a  little  low  carriage  for  two  horses. 

In  this  public  t^te-a-t^te,  she  discussed  the  ques- 
tion of  her  future  and  declared  her  purpose  of  mar- 
rying. 


BEATRIX  469 

"I  have  seven  hundred  thousand  francs,"  said 
she;  "I  tell  you  frankly  that,  if  I  should  meet  a  man 
running  over  with  ambition,  who  was  capable  of 
understanding  my  character,  I  would  change  my 
position ;  for  you  know  what  my  dream  is  ?  I  would 
like  to  be  a  worthy  bourgeois  matron,  to  enter  an 
honest  family  and  make  my  husband  and  children 
happy!" 

The  Norman  was  very  willing  to  be  distinguished 
by  Madame  Schontz;  but  as  to  marrying  her — that 
act  of  folly  seemed  of  questionable  expediency  to  a 
bachelor  of  thirty-eight  who  had  been  made  a  mag- 
istrate by  the  Revolution  of  July.  Observing  his 
hesitation,  Madame  Schontz  took  The  Heir  for  the 
target  of  her  epigrams,  her  witticisms  and  her  con- 
tempt, and  turned  to  Couture.  In  a  week,  the  spec- 
ulator, whom  she  allowed  to  smell  her  cash-box, 
offered  her  his  hand,  his  heart  and  his  future,  three 
objects  of  equal  value. 

Madame  Schontz's  manoeuvres  had  reached  this 
point  when  Madame  de  Grandlieu  began  her  investi- 
gations into  the  life  and  morals  of  the  Beatrix  of 
Rue  Saint-Georges. 


Acting  upon  Abbe  Brossette's  advice,  the  duchess 
begged  the  Marquis  d'Ajuda  to  bring  her  the  king  of 
political  cutthroats,  the  famous  Comte  Maxime  de 
Trailles,  the  archduke  of  Bohemia,  the  youngest  of 
young  men,  although  he  was  fifty  years  old.  Mon- 
sieur d'Ajuda  arranged  to  dine  with  Maxime  at  the 
club  on  Rue  de  Beaune,  and  suggested  to  him  that 
they  go  and  play  dummy  whist  with  the  Due  de 
Grandlieu,  who  had  been  taken  with  the  gout  before 
dinner  and  was  all  alone. 

Although  the  Due  de  Grandlieu's  son-in-law  and 
the  duchess's  cousin  had  a  perfect  right  to  present 
him  in  a  salon  in  which  he  had  never  stepped  foot, 
Maxime  de  Trailles  indulged  in  no  illusions  as  to  the 
significance  of  such  an  invitation;  he  knew  that 
either  the  duke  or  duchess  needed  him.  This  club- 
life,  in  which  you  play  cards  with  people  you  do 
not  receive  at  your  house,  is  not  one  of  the  least 
striking  features  of  these  days  of  ours. 

The  Due  de  Grandlieu  did  Maxime  the  honor  to 
seem  to  be  in  pain.  After  fifteen  games  of  whist, 
he  went  to  bed,  leaving  his  wife  with  Maxime  and 
D'Ajuda.  The  duchess,  seconded  by  the  marquis, 
communicated  her  scheme  to  Monsieur  de  Trailles, 
and  asked  his  collaboration  while  seeming  to  ask  his 
advice  only.  Maxime  listened  to  the  end  without 
expressing  an  opinion  and  waited,  before  speaking, 

(471) 


472  BEATRIX 

until  the  duchess  had  directly  invited  his  co-opera- 
tion. 

"Madame,  I  understand  it  all  perfectly,"  he  then 
said,  after  bestowing  upon  the  duchess  and  the  mar- 
quis one  of  those  shrewd,  profound,  astute,  eloquent 
glances  by  which  such  great  rakes  as  he  know  how 
to  compromise  those  with  whom  they  are  talking. 
"D'Ajuda  will  tell  you  that  if  anyone  in  Paris 
can  conduct  this  double  negotiation,  I  am  the  man 
to  do  it,  without  involving  you  in  it  at  all,  with- 
out even  letting  it  be  known  that  I  came  here  to- 
night. But,  first  of  all,  let  us  arrange  the  pre- 
liminaries of  Leoben.  How  much  do  you  expect 
to  sacrifice?" 

"Whatever  is  necessary." 

"Very  good,  Madame  la  Duchesse.  In  that  case, 
as  a  reward  of  my  efforts,  you  will  do  me  the  honor 
to  receive  at  your  house  and  to  take  under  your 
wing,  in  good  faith,  Madame  la  Comtesse  de 
Trailles." 

"You,  married?"  cried  D'Ajuda. 

"A  fortnight  hence  I  am  to  marry  the  heiress  of  a 
rich  but  excessively  bourgeois  family — a  sacrifice 
to  my  opinions !  I  espouse  the  cause  of  my  govern- 
ment, root  and  branch !  I  propose  to  take  on  a  new 
skin.  Therefore  Madame  la  Duchesse  will  under- 
stand what  a  momentous  thing  it  would  be  for  me 
to  have  my  wife  taken  up  by  her  and  her  family. 
I  am  certain  of  becoming  a  deputy  after  my  father- 
in-law  resigns  his  present  post,  and  I  have  the 
promise  of  a  diplomatic  appointment  in  harmony 


BEATRIX  473 

with  my  new  fortunes.  1  do  not  see  why  my  wife 
should  not  be  as  well  received  as  Madame  de  Por- 
tenduere  in  that  circle  of  young  women  in  which 
the  shining  lights  are  Mesdames  de  la  Bastie, 
Georges  de  Maufrigneuse,  De  TEstorade,  Du 
Guenic,  D'Ajuda,  De  Restaud,  De  Rastignac  and 
De  Vandenesse!  My  wife  is  pretty  and  I  will 
undertake  to  make  her  elegant — Do  you  agree  to 
that,  Madame  la  Duchesse?  You  are  a  religious 
woman,  and  if  you  say  yes,  your  promise,  which 
I  know  to  be  sacred,  will  assist  me  materially  in 
my  change  of  life.  It  will  be  one  more  good  deed 
to  your  credit ! — Alas !  I  have  long  been  the  king  of 
ne'er-do-wells ;  but  I  propose  to  have  done  with  that 
life.  After  all,  we  have  borne  a^ure  with  the  chimera 
or,  spitting  fire,  armed  gules,  and  scales  sinople  with 
crest  counter  ermine,  since  Francois  1.,  who  thought 
it  necessary  to  ennoble  Louis  XI.  's  valet  de  chambre, 
and  we  have  been  counts  since  Catherine  de* 
Medici." 

"I  will  receive  your  wife  and  take  her  under  my 
protection,"  said  the  duchess  solemnly,  "and  my 
friends  will  not  turn  their  backs  on  her,  I  give  you 
my  word." 

"Ah!  Madame  la  Duchesse,"  cried  Maxime,  vis- 
ibly moved,  "if  Monsieur  le  Due  will  also  conde- 
scend to  be  gracious  to  me,  I  promise,  for  my  part, 
that  your  plan  shall  succeed  without  any  great  ex- 
pense to  you.  But,"  he  continued  after  a  pause, 
"you  must  agree  to  follow  my  instructions.  This 
is  the  last  intrigue  of  my  bachelor  life,  and  it  should 


474  BEATRIX 

be  the  more  skilfully  handled  because  a  worthy 
result  is  sought,"  he  said,  with  a  smile. 

"Follow  your  instructions?"  said  the  duchess. 
"Then  I  am  to  appear  in  this  matter,  am  I?" 

"Ah!  madame,  1  will  not  compromise  you,"  cried 
Maxime,  "and  I  esteem  you  too  highly  to  demand 
security  for  myself.  It  is  simply  a  matter  of  follow- 
ing my  advice.  For  example,  Du  Guenic  must  be 
led  about  like  a  holy  object  by  his  wife,  he  must  be 
absent  two  years,  she  must  show  him  Switzerland, 
Italy,  Germany — in  fact,  as  many  countries  as  pos- 
sible—" 

"Ah !  you  answer  an  objection  raised  by  my  con- 
fessor," cried  the  duchess,  ingenuously,  remem- 
bering the  judicious  observation  of  Abbe  Brossette. 

Maxime  and  D'Ajuda  could  not  restrain  a  smile  at 
the  thought  of  this  concert  of  opinion  between 
heaven  and  hell. 

"To  prevent  Madame  de  Rochefide  from  seeing 
Calyste  again,  we  will  all  go  abroad  together.  Juste 
and  his  wife,  Calyste  and  Sabine,  and  myself.  I 
will  leave  Clotilde  with  her  father." 

"Let  us  not  sing  songs  of  victory  yet,  madame," 
said  Maxime;  "I  foresee  enormous  difficulties,  but 
I  shall  overcome  them  beyond  doubt.  Your  es- 
teem and  your  patronage  are  a  price  that  will 
make  me  do  some  very  dirty  things;  but  they — " 

"Dirty  things.?"  the  duchess  repeated,  interrupt- 
ing this  modern  condottiere,  and  exhibiting  as  much 
disgust  as  amazement  on  her  features. 

"And  you  will  be  soiled  with  them,  too,  madame. 


BEATRIX  475 

as  1  am  your  agent.  Why,  are  you  ignorant  of  the 
degree  of  blindness  to  which  Madame  de  Rochefide 
has  reduced  your  son-in-law?  I  know  ail  about  it 
from  Nathan  and  Canal  is,  between  whom  she  was 
hesitating  when  Calyste  jumped  into  the  lioness's 
mouth!  Beatrix  has  succeeded  in  convincing  the 
gallant  Breton  that  she  has  never  loved  anyone  but 
him,  that  she  is  virtuous,  that  her  passion  for  Conti 
was  a  head  passion  in  which  the  heart  and  the  rest 
of  it  took  little  part, — a  musical  passion  in  fact!  As 
to  Rochefide,  that  was  duty.  And  so,  you  see,  she 
is  a  virgin !  She  proves  it  to  him  by  not  remember- 
ing her  son ;  for  a  year  past  she  has  not  made  the 
slightest  effort  to  see  him.  The  young  count  will 
soon  be  twelve  years  old,  and  Madame  Schontz  is 
the  best  kind  of  a  mother  to  him,  because  maternity 
is  a  passion  with  women  like  her,  you  know.  Du 
Guenic  would  be  cut  to  pieces  himself  and  would 
cut  his  wife  to  pieces  for  Beatrix!  And  do  you 
fancy  that  it's  a  simple  matter  to  extricate  a  man 
when  he's  at  the  bottom  of  the  gulf  of  credulity? — 
Why,  madame,  lago  would  waste  all  his  handker- 
chiefs on  him !  It  is  supposed  that  Othello,  his 
younger  brother  Orosmane,  Saint-Preux,  Rene, 
Werther,  and  other  lovers  of  renown,  represent 
love!  Why,  their  frosty-hearted  creators  never 
knew  what  absolute  love  is.  Moli^re  alone  had  a 
suspicion  of  it.  Love,  Madame  la  Duchesse,  is  not 
loving  a  noble  woman,  a  Clarissa,  God  save  the 
mark!  Love  is  saying  to  one's  self:  'The  woman 
I  love  is  an  infamous  creature,  she  deceives  me  and 


476  BEATRIX 

will  deceive  me,  she's  a  dissipated  wretch,  she 
smells  of  all  the  cookery  of  hell,'  and  then  running 
to  her  and  finding  in  her  the  pure  azure  of  the  sky 
and  the  flowers  of  paradise.  That  is  how  Moli^re 
loved,  that  is  how  we  sinners  love;  for  I  always 
weep  over  the  great  scene  in  Arnolphe! — And  that's 
how  your  son-in-law  loves  Beatrix! — 1  shall  have 
trouble  in  separating  Rochefide  from  Madame 
Schontz,  but  Madame  Schontz  will  undoubtedly 
accede  to  the  plan;  I  will  see  how  matters  stand  in 
her  household.  As  to  Calyste  and  Beatrix,  we 
must  resort  to  the  axe,  treachery  of  a  superior  kind 
and  such  base  infamy,  that  your  virtuous  imagina- 
tion would  never  descend  to  it,  unless  your  spiritual 
director  gives  you  his  hand.  You  have  asked  for 
the  impossible  and  you  shall  have  it  But,  despite 
my  resolution  to  use  fire  and  steel,  I  do  not  abso- 
lutely promise  success.  I  know  lovers  who  do  not 
recoil  before  the  most  ghastly  disillusionments. 
You  are  too  virtuous  to  realize  the  empire  acquired 
by  women  who  are  not  virtuous." 

"Don't  begin  these  infamous  proceedings  until  I 
have  consulted  Abbe  Brossette  to  make  sure  how  far 
I  can  be  considered  your  accomplice  in  them,"  cried 
the  duchess,  with  a  naive  frankness  that  showed 
how  much  selfishness  there  is  in  piety. 

"You  shall  know  nothing  at  all  about  them,  my 
dear  mother,"  said  the  Marquis  d'Ajuda. 

As  they  stood  on  the  stoop  waiting  for  the  mar- 
quis's carriage,  he  said  to  Maxime : 

"You  frightened  the  good  duchess." 


BEATRIX  477 

"But  she  has  no  idea  of  the  difficulty  of  what  she 
asks! — Shall  we  go  to  the  Jockey  Club?  I  must 
make  Rochefide  invite  me  to  dine  at  La  Schontz's 
to-morrow;  for  before  I  sleep  to-night  my  plans  will 
be  laid  and  I  shall  have  selected  the  pawns  to  be 
used  in  the  game  of  chess  I  am  about  to  play.  In 
the  days  of  her  splendor,  Beatrix  would  not  receive 
me ;  I  will  settle  my  account  with  her  and  avenge 
your  sister-in-law  so  cruelly  that  she  may  think  she 
is  avenged  too  much." 

The  next  day  Rochefide  informed  Madame  Schontz 
that  Maxime  de  Trailles  would  dine  with  them. 
That  was  equivalent  to  giving  her  notice  to  display 
her  magnificence  and  to  prepare  the  most  exquisite 
of  repasts  for  that  connoisseur  emeritus  whom  all 
women  of  Madame  Schontz's  class  held  in  dread ;  so 
she  paid  as  much  attention  to  her  toilet  as  to  putting 
her  house  in  condition  to  receive  that  formidable  per- 
sonage. 

In  Paris,  there  are  almost  as  many  royalties  as 
there  are  different  arts,  sciences,  professions  and 
moral  specialties ;  and  the  most  powerful  of  those 
who  practice  the  trade  of  royalty,  has  a  majesty 
that  is  all  his  own ;  he  is  appreciated  and  respected 
by  his  peers,  who  know  the  difficulties  of  the  trade, 
and  whose  admiration  is  accorded  to  him  who  can 
make  a  plaything  of  it 

Maxime  was,  in  the  eyes  of  rats  and  courtesans, 
an  exceedingly  influential  and  capable  man,  for  he 
had  succeeded  in  inspiring  prodigious  passions.  He 
was  admired  by  all  those  who  know  how  hard  it  is 


478  BEATRIX 

to  live  in  Paris  on  good  terms  with  one's  creditors; 
in  fact,  he  had  no  rival  in  elegance,  good  form  and 
wit  except  the  illustrious  De  Marsay,  who  had  em- 
ployed him  in  some  political  missions.  This  will 
suffice  to  explain  his  interview  with  the  duchess, 
his  prestige  with  Madame  Schontz,  and  his  authori- 
tative manner  of  speech  in  a  forthcoming  conference 
on  Boulevard  des  Italiens  with  a  young  man  already 
famous,  although  a  new  arrival  in  the  Bohemia  of 
Paris. 

The  next  morning,  as  he  was  dressing,  Maxime 
de  Trailles  was  informed  of  the  arrival  of  Finot,  to 
whom  he  had  written  the  night  before ;  he  requested 
him  to  arrange,  as  if  by  chance,  a  breakfast  at  the 
Cafe  Anglais,  so  that  he  could  hear  Couture,  Lous- 
teau  and  Finot  himself  gossip.  Finot,  whose  rela- 
tions with  the  Comte  de  Trailles  were  similar  to 
those  of  a  sub-lieutenant  with  a  marshal  of  France, 
could  refuse  him  nothing;  moreover,  it  was  danger- 
ous sport  to  stick  pins  into  that  lion.  And  so,  when 
Maxime  went  to  the  cafe  for  his  breakfast,  he  found 
Finot  and  his  two  friends  at  table;  the  conversation 
had  already  veered  around  to  Madame  Schontz. 
Couture,  under  the  skilful  handling  of  Finot  and 
of  Lousteau,  who  seconded  Finot's  design  unwit- 
tingly, gave  the  Comte  de  Trailles  all  the  infor- 
mation he  desired  concerning  Madame  Schontz. 

About  one  o'clock  Maxime  stood  chewing  his 
toothpick  and  talking  with  Du  Tillet  on  the  steps  at 
Tortoni's,  where  the  little  Bourse,  a  sort  of  preface 
to  the  Bourse  itself,  is  held  by  certain  speculators. 


BEATRIX  479 

He  seemed  deeply  engrossed  in  business,  but  he 
was  waiting  for  the  young  Comte  de  la  Palferine, 
who  was  certain  to  pass  that  way  before  long. 
Boulevard  des  Italiens  is  to-day  what  Pont  Neuf 
was  in  1650, — everybody  of  consequence  traverses 
it  at  least  once  a  day. 

In  fact,  within  ten  minutes,  Maxime  dropped  Du 
Tillet's  arm,  and  nodded  to  the  young  prince  of  Bo- 
hemia, saying  with  a  smile: 

"A  word  with  you,  count!" 

The  two  rivals,  one  a  declining  star,  the  other  a 
rising  sun,  took  their  seats  upon  four  chairs  in  front 
of  the  Cafe  de  Paris.  Maxime  was  careful  to  select 
a  seat  at  some  distance  from  a  number  of  old  fel- 
lows, who  habitually  arrange  themselves  like 
espaliers  about  one  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  to  burn 
out  their  rheumatic  affections.  He  had  excellent 
reasons  for  distrusting  old  men. — See  A  Man  of  Busi- 
ness.   Scenes  of  Parisian  Life. 

"Have  you  any  debts?"  Maxime  asked  the  young 
count. 

"If  I  had  none,  should  I  be  worthy  to  succeed 
you?"  retorted  La  Palferine. 

"By  asking  you  that  question,  I  do  not  mean  to 
imply  any  doubt  as  to  the  fact,"  Maxime  rejoined; 
"I  simply  want  to  know  if  the  total  is  a  respectable 
amount,  and  if  it  goes  to  five  or  six!" 

"Six  what?" 

"Six  figures!  whether  you  owe  fifty  thousand  or 
a  hundred  thousand  ? — I  have  owed  as  much  as  six 
hundred  thousand  myself!" 


48o  BEATRIX 

La  Palferine  took  off  his  hat  with  an  air  no  less 
respectful  than  jocose. 

"If  my  credit  were  good  enough  to  enable  me  to 
borrow  a  hundred  thousand  francs,"  said  he,  "I 
would  forget  my  creditors  and  pass  my  life  in 
Venice  among  the  chefs-d'oeuvre  of  art,  at  the 
theatre  in  the  evening,  with  pretty  women  at  night, 
and—" 

"And  what  would  you  be  at  my  age?"  queried 
Maxime. 

"I  shouldn't  live  to  your  age,"  the  young  count 
retorted. 

Maxime  returned  his  rival's  courtesy  by  raising 
his  hat  slightly  with  a  laughably  solemn  gesture. 

"There  is  another  way  of  looking  at  life,"  he  re- 
plied, in  the  tone  one  connoisseur  might  use  to 
another.     "You  owe — ?" 

"Oh!  a  paltry  sum  worthy  to  be  confessed  to  my 
uncle;  if  I  had  one,  he  would  disinherit  me  on  ac- 
count of  the  contemptible  figure;  six  thousand!" 

"A  man  is  more  annoyed  by  six  than  by  a  hun- 
dred thousand  francs,"  said  Maxime  sententiously. 
"La  Palferine!  you  have  a  bold  mind,  you  have 
even  more  mind  than  boldness,  you  can  go  very  far, 
become  an  eminent  politician.  Look  you — of  all 
those  who  have  started  in  the  career,  the  end  of 
which  I  have,  now  reached,  and  who  have  been  put 
forward  in  opposition  to  me,  you  are  the  only  one 
who  has  ever  made  a  pleasant  impression  on  me." 

La  Palferine  blushed,  he  was  so  flattered  by  this 
admission,   made  with  graceful   affability  by  the 


BEATRIX  481 

chief  of  Parisian  adventurers.  This  instinctive  im- 
pulse of  his  conceit  was  an  acknowledgment  of  his 
inferiority  which  wounded  him,  but  Maxime  divined 
the  reaction  that  was  sure  to  follow  in  a  nature  en- 
dowed with  such  quick  intelligence,  and  he  rem- 
edied the  difficulty  at  once  by  throwing  himself 
upon  the  young  man's  mercy. 

"Are  you  willing  to  do  something  for  me,  who  am 
about  withdrawing  from  the  Olympic  arena  by 
reason  of  an  advantageous  marriage  ?  I  will  do  much 
for  you." 

"You  will  make  me  very  proud;  it  is  a  realiza- 
tion of  the  fable  of  The  Lion  and  the  Mouse,"  said 
La  Palferine. 

"I  will  begin  by  loaning  you  twenty  thousand 
francs,"  continued  Maxime. 

"Twenty  thousand  francs? — 1  knew  that  if  I 
walked  up  and  down  this  boulevard  often  enough, 
I — "  said  La  Palferine,  by  way  of  parenthesis. 

"My  dear  fellow,  we  must  put  you  on  a  respectable 
footing,"  said  Maxime  with  a  smile;  "don't  remain 
on  two  feet,  have  six;  do  as  I  do;  I  have  never 
alighted  from  my  tilbury — " 

"But,  in  that  case,  you  must  be  intending  to  ask 
me  something  beyond  my  abilities!" 

"No,  it's  a  matter  of  ingratiating  yourself  with  a 
woman  in  a  fortnight." 

"Is  it  a  harlot?" 

"Why?" 

"That  would  be  impossible;  but  if  it  were  a  very 
comme  ilfaut  woman,  bright  and — " 
31 


482  BEATRIX 

"It  is  a  most  illustrious  marchioness!" 

"You  want  to  get  her  letters?"  queried  the  young 
count 

"Ah!  you  strike  at  my  heart!"  cried  Maxime. 
"No,  that's  not  it." 

"Then  I  must  love  her?" 

"Yes,  in  the  real  meaning  of  the  word." 

"If  I  am  to  depart  from  the  aesthetic,  it  is  alto- 
gether impossible,"  said  La  Palferine.  "I  have 
some  sense  of  probity  with  regard  to  women,  you 
see:  we  can  break  them  on  the  wheel,  but  not — " 

"Ah!  then  I  have  not  been  misinformed!"  cried 
Maxime.  "Do  you  think  I  am  a  man  to  suggest 
petty  two-sou  infamies  to  you. — No,  you  must  go 
on,  you  must  dazzle,  you  must  conquer. — My  boy,  I 
will  give  you  twenty  thousand  francs  to-night  and 
ten  days  to  win  the  victory.  Farewell  until  to- 
night at  Madame  Schontz's." 

"I  dine  there." 

"Good,"  said  Maxime.  "Later,  if  you  have 
need  of  me.  Monsieur  le  Comte,  you  will  know 
where  to  find  me,"  he  added,  in  the  tone  of  a  king 
who  gives  pledges  instead  of  promising. 

"Has  this  poor  woman  injured  you  very  seri- 
ously?" asked  La  Palferine. 

"Don't  try  to  drop  the  lead  in  my  waters,  my 
boy,  and  let  me  tell  you  that,  in  case  you  are  suc- 
cessful, you  will  find  such  powerful  protectors  that 
you  will  be  able,  like  me,  to  take  refuge  in  a  good 
marriage  when  you  are  tired  of  your  Bohemian 
life." 


BEATRIX  483 

"So  the  time  does  come  when  one  tires  of  amus- 
ing one's  self,  of  being  nothing  in  particular,  of  liv- 
ing like  the  birds,  of  hunting  in  the  streets  of  Paris 
like  savages,  and  of  laughing  at  everything? — " 

"Everything  is  tiresome,  even  hell,"  laughed 
Maxime.     "Until  this  evening." 

The  two  roues,  the  young  and  the  old,  rose  from 
their  seats. 

"Madame  d'Espard  can't  endure  Beatrix;  she 
will  help  me,"  said  Maxime  to  himself,  as  he  re- 
turned to  his  one-horse  vehicle. — "To  the  Hotel  de 
Grandlieu,"  he  cried  to  his  coachman,  as  he  saw 
Rastignac  passing. 

Show  me  a  great  man  without  his  weaknesses ! — 
Maxime  found  the  duchess,  Madame  du  Guenic  and 
Clotilde,  all  in  tears. 

"What's  the  matter?"  he  asked  the  duchess. 

"Calyste  didn't  come  home  last  night;  it  was  the 
first  time,  and  my  poor  Sabine  is  in  despair." 

"  Madame  la  Duchesse,"  said  Maxime,  leading  the 
pious  woman  into  a  window  recess,  "in  the  name 
of  God  who  will  judge  us,  observe  the  most  pro- 
found secrecy  as  to  my  devotion,  make  D'Ajuda 
promise  that  Calyste  shall  know  nothing  of  our 
plots,  or  we  shall  have  a  duel  to  the  death.  When 
I  told  you  that  it  wouldn't  cost  you  very  much,  I 
meant  that  you  would  not  have  to  expend  any  out- 
rageous sums ;  I  must  have  about  twenty  thousand 
francs,  but  all  the  rest  is  my  affair;  we  must  be 
able  to  dispose  of  some  important  offices,  perhaps 
a  receiver-generalship." 


484  BEATRIX 

The  duchess  and  Maxime  left  the  room.  When 
the  former  returned  to  her  two  daughters,  she  heard 
a  new  dithyramb  from  Sabine  interlarded  with 
domestic  incidents  even  more  cruel  than  those  which 
had  brought  the  young  wife's  happiness  to  an  end. 

"Set  your  mind  at  rest,  darling,"  said  the  duch- 
ess to  her  daughter;  "Beatrix  will  pay  dearly  for 
your  tears  and  your  suffering;  Satan's  hand  is  upon 
her  and  she  will  undergo  ten  humiliations  for  every 
one  of  yours!" 


Madame  Schontz  notified  Claude  Vignon,  who  had 
several  times  manifested  a  desire  to  know  Maxime 
de  Trailles  personally;  she  invited  Couture,  Fabien, 
Bixiou,  Leon  de  Lora,  La  Palferine  and  Nathan. 
The  last-named  was  invited  at  Rochefide's  request 
on  Maxime's  account.  Aurelie  thus  had  nine  guests, 
all  of  the  first  force  intellectually,  except  Du  Ron- 
ceret,  but  The  Heir's  Norman  vanity  and  brutal  am- 
bition placed  him  on  the  level  of  the  literary  power 
of  Claude  Vignon,  the  poetic  talent  of  Nathan,  the 
finesse  of  La  Palferine,  the  financial  shrewdness  of 
Couture,  the  wit  of  Bixiou,  the  selfish  scheming  of 
Finot,  the  profundity  of  Maxime,  and  the  genius  of 
Leon  de  Lora. 

Madame  Schontz,  whose  object  it  was  to  appear 
young  and  beautiful,  armed  herself  with  a  toilet 
such  as  only  women  of  her  sort  know  how  to  make. 
It  consisted  of  a  lace  pelerine  of  spider's  web  fine- 
ness, a  blue  velvet  dress,  with  a  glovelike  waist 
buttoned  with  opals,  and  hair  arranged  in  bandeaux 
that  glistened  like  ebony.  Madame  Schontz  owed 
her  celebrity  as  a  pretty  woman  to  the  brilliancy 
and  freshness  of  a  warm,  white  complexion  like  a 
Creole's,  to  the  abundance  of  details  indicating  keen 
intelligence,  to  the  resolute,  clean-cut  features,  of 
which  the  most  illustrious  example  was  for  so  long 
a  time  the  Comtesse  Merlin,  and  which  may  be  said 
(485) 


486  BEATRIX 

to  be  peculiar  to  Southern  faces.  Unfortunately, 
little  Madame  Schontz  had  developed  a  tendency  to 
stoutness  since  her  life  had  become  tranquil  and 
happy.  The  neck,  seductively  round  and  plump, 
was  beginning  to  thicken,  as  were  the  shoulders. 
The  head  is  so  essentially  the  part  of  a  woman  on 
which  men  feast  in  France,  that  a  lovely  head  will 
overcome  a  misshapen  body  a  long  while. 

"My  dear  child,"  said  Maxime,  as  he  entered  the 
salon  and  kissed  Madame  Schontz  on  the  forehead, 
"Rochefide  was  anxious  to  show  me  your  establish- 
ment, which  I  have  never  yet  seen ;  it  seems  to  be 
almost  consonant  with  his  four  hundred  thousand  a 
year. — Upon  my  word,  if  he  had  wanted  fifty  thou- 
sand he  couldn't  have  raised  it,  when  he  first  knew 
you,  and  in  less  than  five  years  you  have  put  him  in 
the  way  of  making  what  another,  a  Malaga,  an 
Antonia,  Cadine  or  Florentine,  would  have  run 
through  for  him." 

"I  am  not  a  courtesan,  I  am  an  artist!"  said  Ma- 
dame Schontz  with  a  sort  of  dignity.  "I  hope  to 
end,  as  they  say  in  the  play,  by  being  the  first  of  a 
race  of  honest  folk." 

"This  is  a  desperate  state  of  affairs — we  are  all 
marrying,"  said  Maxime,  throwing  himself  into  an 
easy-chair  by  the  fire.  "Here  am  I  on  the  eve  of 
taking  a  Comtesse  Maxime." 

"Oh!  howl  would  like  to  see  her!"  cried  Ma- 
dame Schontz.  "But  permit  me  to  present  Mon- 
sieur Claude  Vignon. — Monsieur  Claude  Vignon, 
Monsieur  de  Trailles!" 


BEATRIX  487 

**Ah!  it  was  you  who  allowed  Camille  Maupin, 
the  hostess  of  literary  people  to  go  into  a  convent, 
was  it  not?"  cried  Maxime.  "After  you,  God! — I 
have  never  received  such  honor.  Mademoiselle  des 
Touches  treated  you,  monsieur,  like  Louis  XIV." 

"And  that  is  how  history  is  written!"  replied 
Vignon.  "Don't  you  know  that  her  fortune  went 
to  redeem  Monsieur  du  Guenic's  estates? — If  she 
knew  that  Calyste  is  in  her  ex-friend's  clutches — " 
Maxime  touched  the  critic's  foot  and  pointed  to 
Monsieur  de  Rochefide — "I  believe  she  would  leave 
her  convent  to  rescue  him  from  her." 

"On  my  word,  Rochefide,  my  friend,"  said  Max- 
ime, when  he  saw  that  Claude  paid  no  heed  to  his 
warning,  "if  I  were  you  i  would  give  my  wife's 
fortune  back  to  her,  so  that  it  shouldn't  be  thought 
in  society  that  she  clings  to  Calyste  from  neces- 
sity." 

"Maxime  is  right,"  said  Madame  Schontz,  look- 
ing at  Arthur  who  was  as  red  as  scarlet  "If  I 
have  increased  your  income  a  few  thousand  francs, 
you  could  find  no  better  way  to  employ  them.  I 
should  have  assured  the  happiness  of  the  wife  and 
the  husband;  what  a  feather  in  my  cap!" 

"I  had  never  thought  of  it,"  the  marquis  replied; 
"but  one  must  be  a  gentleman  before  being  a  hus- 
band." 

"Let  me  tell  you  when  it  is  time  to  be  generous, " 
said  Maxime. 

"Arthur,"  said  Aurelie,  "Maxime  is  right — You 
see,  my  good  man,   our  generous  actions  are  like 


488  BEATRIX 

Couture's  shares — actions — "  she  added,  looking  in 
the  mirror  to  see  who  was  just  arriving,  "we  must 
invest  in  them  at  the  proper  time." 

Couture  was  accompanied  by  Finot.  In  a  few 
moments,  all  the  guests  were  assembled  in  the 
beautiful  blue  and  gold  salon  of  the  Hotel  Schontz; 
such  was  the  name  the  artists  had  given  to  their 
open  house  since  Rochefide  had  purchased  it  for 
his  Ninon  II. 

When  La  Palferine,  who  was  the  last  to  arrive, 
entered  the  room,  Maxime  went  to  him,  led  him 
into  a  window  recess,  and  handed  him  the  twenty 
banknotes. 

"Above  all  things,  my  boy,  don't  spare  them," 
he  said  with  the  grace  peculiar  to  roues. 

"Nobody  has  the  talent  that  you  have  of  doubling 
the  value  of  what  you  seem  to  give!"  replied  La 
Palferine. 

"Have  you  decided?" 

"Of  course,  since  I  take  the  wage,"  replied  the 
young  count,  with  an  air  of  hauteur  mingled  with 
raillery. 

"Very  well,  Nathan  here  will  present  you  within 
a  day  or  two  to  Madame  la  Marquise  de  Rochefide," 
he  said  in  his  ear. 

La  Palferine  started  back  when  he  heard  the  name. 

"Don't  fail  to  say  that  you  are  madly  in  love  with 
her;  and,  in  order  not  to  arouse  suspicion,  drink 
wine  and  liqueurs  till  you  drop!  I  will  tell  Aurelie 
to  put  you  beside  Nathan.  But,  my  boy,  we  must 
meet  every  morning  at  one  o'clock  on  Boulevard  de 


BEATRIX  489 

la  Madeleine,  you  to  tell  me  of  your  progress,  and  I 
to  give  you  your  instructions." 

"I  will  be  there,  my  master,"  said  the  young 
count,  bowing. 

"How  is  it  that  you  ask  us  to  dine  with  a  fellow 
dressed  like  the  head  waiter  at  a  restaurant?"  said 
Maxime  in  Madame  Schontz's  ear,  pointing  to  Du 
Ronceret 

"What!  have  you  never  seen  The  Heir,?  Du 
Ronceret  of  Alenfon. " 

"Monsieur,"  said  Maxime  to  Fabien,  "you  must 
know  my  friend  D'Esgrignon .?" 

"It's  a  long  time  now  since  Victurnien  dropped 
my  acquaintance,"  Fabien  replied;  "but  we  were 
very  intimate  in  our  early  youth." 

The  dinner  was  one  of  those  that  are  given  only 
at  Paris,  and  by  the  queens  of  debauchery,  for  their 
sumptuous  elegance  surprises  the  most  critical.  It 
was  at  a  similar  repast,  given  by  a  courtesan,  rich 
and  beautiful  like  Madame  Schontz,  that  Paganini 
declared  that  he  had  never  feasted  so  royally  at  any 
sovereign's  table,  nor  drunk  such  wines  at  any 
prince's,  nor  heard  such  clever  conversation,  nor 
seen  good  taste  and  elegance  so  coquettishly  dis- 
played. 

Maxime  and  Madame  Schontz  returned  first  to 
the  salon,  about  ten  o'clock,  leaving  the  rest  of  the 
guests,  who  no  longer  took  the  trouble  to  gloss  over 
their  anecdotes  and  vaunt  their  good  qualities, 
gluing  their  viscous  lips  to  the  rims  of  the  little 
glasses,  which  they  could  not  empty. 


490  BEATRIX 

**WeIl,  my  dear,"  said  Maxime,  "you  are  not 
mistaken;  yes,  I  come  on  account  of  your  lovely 
eyes;  it's  an  important  matter;  you  must  leave 
Arthur,  but  I  will  promise  that  he'll  give  you  two 
hundred  thousand  francs." 

"Why  should  I  leave  the  poor  fellow,  pray?" 

"To  marry  that  imbecile  who  has  come  from 
Alenfon  for  the  express  purpose.  He  has  already 
been  a  judge  and  I  will  see  that  he  is  made  president 
in  the  place  of  Blondet's  father,  who  is  close  upon 
eighty-two  years  old;  and,  if  you  know  how  to  sail 
your  boat,  your  husband  will  become  a  deputy. 
You  will  be  a  personage  and  you  can  crush  Madame 
la  Comtesse  de  Bruel — " 

"Never,"  said  Madame  Schontz,  "she's  a  count- 
ess." 

"Is  he  of  the  stuff  counts  are  made  of?" 

"Well,  he  has  a  coat  of  arms,"  said  Aurelie, 
taking  a  letter  from  a  magnificent  letter-basket  that 
hung  at  the  corner  of  the  mantelpiece,  and  handing 
it  to  Maxime;  "what  does  that  mean?  there  are 
some  combs  in  it." 

"His  arms  are  coup^  argent,  three  combs  gules, 
two  and  one,  alternating  with  three  bunches  of  grapes 
purple,  stalks  and  leaves  sinople,  one  and  two  ;  below, 
three  feathers  or  arranged  en  fret,  with  Servir  for 
device,  and  an  esquire's  helmet.  It's  no  great  mat- 
ter;  they  were  ennobled  under  Louis  XV.,  they  had 
some  haberdasher  for  an  ancestor,  the  maternal  line 
made  a  fortune  in  the  wine  trade,  and  the  Du  Ronce- 
ret  who  got  the  title  was  probably  a  clerk. — But  if 


BEATRIX  491 

you  succeed  in  shaking  off  Arthur,  the  Du  Roncerets 
will  be  barons  at  the  very  least,  I  promise  you  that, 
my  little  fairy.  You  see,  my  child,  you  must  lie  in 
pickle  five  or  six  years  in  the  provinces  if  you  want 
to  bury  La  Schontz  in  Madame  la  Presidente. — The 
fellow  looks  at  you  with  an  expression  that  can  have 
but  one  meaning;  you  have  him  fast — " 

"No,"  replied  Aurelie,  "when  I  offered  him  my 
hand,  he  was  as  calm  as  the  price  of  eau-de-vie  in 
the  bulletin  of  the  Bourse." 

"I  will  undertake  to  convince  him,  if  he  is  tipsy 
— Go  and  see  how  far  along  they  are." 

"It  isn't  worth  while  to  go,  for  I  can  hear  nobody 
but  Bixiou,  who  is  making  one  of  his  charges  to 
which  nobody  listens;  but  I  know  my  Arthur;  he 
feels  obliged  to  be  polite  to  Bixiou,  but,  even  if  his 
eyes  are  closed,  he's  looking  at  him  all  the  same." 

"Let  us  go  back,  then! — " 

"By  the  way,  in  whose  interest  am  I  to  work, 
Maxime?"  asked  Madame  Schontz,  suddenly. 

"In  Madame  de  Rochefide's,"  said  Maxime  with- 
out hesitation ;  "it  is  impossible  to  bring  her  and 
Arthur  together  while  you  retain  your  hold  on  him; 
with  her,  it's  a  question  of  being  at  the  head  of  his 
household,  with  four  hundred  thousand  francs  a 
year!" 

"And  she  offers  me  only  two  hundred  thousand 
francs  in  all !  I  must  have  three  hundred,  as  she  is 
the  person  interested.  Look  you,  I  have  taken  care 
of  her  brat  and  her  husband,  I  have  filled  her  place 
in  everything;  and  now  she  would  be  stingy  with 


492  BEATRIX 

me!  With  three  hundred  thousand  from  her,  my 
dear  fellow,  I  shall  have  a  million.  With  that,  if 
you  promise  that  I  shall  be  the  wife  of  the  president 
of  the  court  at  Alencon,  I  might  give  myself  airs  as 
Madame  du  Ronceret" 

"It's  agreed,"  said  Maxime. 

"How  bored  I  shall  be  in  that  little  town!"  cried 
Aurelie,  philosophically.  "I  have  heard  so  much 
about  the  province  from  D'Esgrignon  and  La  Val- 
Noble,  that  it  is  as  if  I  had  already  lived  there." 

"And  suppose  I  should  assure  you  of  the  counte- 
nance of  the  nobility?" 

"Ah!  Maxime,  you  must  tell  me  so  much  about 
the  nobility!  Ah!  yes,  but  the  pigeon  may  refuse 
the  wing — " 

"He  is  very  ugly  with  his  plum-colored  skin,  he 
has  bristles  instead  of  whiskers,  he  has  the  appear- 
ance of  a  wild  boar  although  he  has  the  eyes  of  a 
bird  of  prey.  He  will  make  the  finest  president  in 
the  world.  Never  fear !  in  ten  minutes  he  will  sing 
you  Isabelle's  air  in  the  fourth  act  of  Robert  le 
Diahle:  *  I  am  at  your  knees!'  but  will  you  under- 
take to  send  Arthur  off  to  his  wife's  knees.?" 

"It  will  be  a  hard  task,  but  by  trying  I  shall  suc- 
ceed— " 

About  half-past  ten  the  guests  returned  to  the 
salon  for  their  coffee.  In  the  relative  positions  of 
Madame  Schontz,  Couture  and  Du  Ronceret,  it  is 
easy  to  imagine  the  effect  produced  upon  the  ambi- 
tious Norman  by  the  following  conversation  which 
Maxime  had  with  Couture,   in  a  corner  and   in 


BEATRIX  493 

undertones  so  that  nobody  should  hear,  but  which 
Fabien  overheard: 

"My  dear  fellow,  if  you  are  wise  you  will  accept 
the  receiver-generalship  in  some  distant  depart- 
ment, which  Madame  de  Rochefide  will  procure  for 
you;  Aurelie's  million  will  enable  you  to  deposit 
the  necessary  security  and  you  would  have  separate 
estates  on  marrying  her.  You  will  become  a  deputy 
in  time  if  you  handle  your  ship  carefully,  and  the 
first  return  I  shall  ask  for  having  saved  you,  will  be 
your  vote  in  the  Chamber." 

"I  shall  always  be  proud  to  be  a  soldier  of  yours. " 

"Ah!  my  dear  fellow,  you  have  had  a  narrow  es- 
cape! Just  fancy;  Aurelie  fell  in  love  with  that 
Norman  from  Alengon,  she  asked  to  have  him  made 
a  baron,  president  of  the  court  in  his  town,  and  an 
officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honor.  My  imbecile  didn't 
know  enough  to  divine  Madame  Schontz's  real 
worth,  and  you  owe  your  good  fortune  to  a  fit  of 
spite;  so  don't  give  the  clever  creature  time  to  re- 
flect.    I  will  go  and  put  the  irons  in  the  fire." 

Maxime  left  Couture  overwhelmed  with  delight, 
and  said  to  La  Palferine: 

"Shall  I  drive  you,  my  son?" 

At  eleven  o'clock  Aurelie  was  left  with  Couture, 
Fabien  and  Rochefide.  Arthur  was  asleep  in  a  re- 
clining-chair.  Couture  and  Fabien  were  trying,  un- 
successfully, to  outstay  each  other.  Madame  Schontz 
put  an  end  to  the  contest  with  a  friendly:  "Till  to- 
morrow, my  dear!"  to  Couture,  who  took  it  in  good 
part. 


494  BEATRIX 

' '  Mademoiselle, "  said  Fabien  in  an  undertone,  "if 
you  noticed  the  abstracted  manner  with  which  I  re- 
ceived the  offer  you  indirectly  made  me,  I  beg  you 
not  to  believe  that  it  was  due  to  the  slightest  hesi- 
tation on  my  part;  but  you  don't  know  my  mother 
— she  never  would  consent  to  my  accepting  my  good 
fortune — " 

"You  have  passed  the  age  when  a  sommation 
respectueuse^  is  necessary,  my  dear  man,"  retorted 
Aurelie  insolently.  "But,  if  you're  afraid  of  mam- 
ma, you're  not  the  man  for  me." 

"Josephine!"  exclaimed  The  Heir  affectionately, 
passing  his  right  arm  boldly  around  Madame 
Schontz's  waist,  "I  thought  that  you  loved  me.?" 

"Well,  what  then.?" 

"Perhaps  I  might  mollify  my  mother  and  obtain 
more  than  her  consent" 

"How,  pray.?" 

"If  you  would  exert  your  influence — " 

"To  have  you  made  a  baron,  officer  of  the  Legion 
of  Honor  and  president  of  the  court,  eh,  my  son .? 
Look  you,  I  have  done  so  many  things  in  my  life 
that  I  am  capable  of  virtue !  I  can  be  an  honest, 
loyal  wife,  and  carry  my  husband  in  tow  to  a  great 
height;  but  I  must  be  loved  by  him  so  dearly  that 
never  a  glance  or  a  thought  must  be  diverted  from 
my   heart.      Do  you   agree  to  that.? — Don't  bind 

Sommation  respectueuse. — "An  extra-judicial  act  which  a  young  man  of 
twenty-live  or  a  young  woman  of  twenty-one  is  required  to  perform,  to  inform 
his  or  her  father  and  mother,  or  grandfather  and  grandmother,  of  his  or  her 
Intended  marriage,  and  to  asl<  their  advice  concerning  It,  when  they  have 
not  given  their  consent."— LiTTRi. 


BEATRIX  495 

yourself  imprudently,  for  your  life  is  at  stake,  my 
dear." 

"With  a  woman  like  you  1  drink  without  looking, " 
said  Fabien,  intoxicated  by  her  glance  as  much  as 
by  the  Curafoa  he  had  imbibed. 

"You  shall  never  repent  those  words,  my  pet,  you 
shall  be  a  peer  of  France. — As  for  yonder  poor  old 
fellow,"  she  added,  glancing  at  the  sleeping  Roche- 
fide,  "it's  all  u-p,  up  with  him!" 

It  was  so  prettily  and  so  well  said,  that  Fabien 
seized  Madame  Schontz  and  kissed  her,  in  an  out- 
burst of  excitement  and  joy,  in  which  the  double 
intoxication  of  love  and  wine  yielded  to  that  of  good 
fortune  and  ambition. 

"Remember,  my  dear  child,  "said  she,  "to  behave 
in  a  becoming  manner  with  your  wife  from  this 
time  forth;  don't  play  the  lover,  and  let  me  extri- 
cate myself  with  propriety  from  my  mud  puddle. 
Think  of  Couture,  imagining  himself  a  rich  man 
and  receiver-general!" 

"I  have  a  horror  of  that  man,"  said  Fabien,  "I 
wish  I  need  never  see  him  again." 

"I  won't  receive  him  any  more,"  said  the  courte- 
san, with  a  prudish  air.  "Now  that  we  are  agreed, 
my  Fabien,  you  must  go;  it's  one  o'clock." 

This  little  scene  gave  birth,  in  the  household  of 
Aurelie  and  Arthur,  hitherto  so  perfectly  peaceful 
and  happy,  to  the  phase  of  domestic  warfare  which 
is  brought  about  at  all  firesides  by  the  existence  of 
a  secret  interest  on  the  part  of  one  of  the  partners. 

The  very  next  day  Arthur  awoke  alone,  and  found 


496  BEATRIX 

Madame  Schontz  as  cold  as  such  women  can  be  on 
occasion. 

"What  happened  last  night?"  he  asked,  looking 
at  Aurelie  as  they  sat  at  breakfast. 

"That's  the  way  it  is  in  Paris, "she  said.  "We go 
to  sleep  in  damp  weather,  and  the  next  day  the 
pavements  are  dry  and  everything  is  frozen  so  hard 
that  the  dust  blows;  would  you  like  a  brush.? — " 

"Why,  what's  the  matter  with  you,  my  dear  little 
love.?" 

"Go  back  to  your  great  awkward  hussy  of  a 
wife — " 

"My  wife?"  cried  the  poor  marquis. 

"Don't  I  guess  why  you  brought  Maxime  here? 
You  want  to  patch  up  a  reconciliation  with  Madame 
de  Rochefide,  who  needs  you  perhaps  on  account  of 
some  inopportune  brat — And  I,  whom  you  are 
always  calling  so  clever,  advised  you  to  give  her 
back  her  fortune !  Oh !  I  see  your  plan !  after  five 
years,  monsieur  is  tired  of  me.  I  am  getting  fat  and 
Beatrix  is  bony;  that's  what  makes  you  change. 
You're  not  the  first  man  I  have  known  with  a  taste 
for  skeletons.  Your  Beatrix  dresses  well,  too,  and 
you  are  one  of  the  men  who  like  cloak-hangers. 
Then  you  want  to  get  Monsieur  du  Guenic  sent 
away.  That  will  be  a  triumph!  That  will  put 
you  in  a  very  fine  light.  How  people  will  talk 
about  it!  you'll  be  a  downright  hero!" 

Madame  Schontz  had  not  ceased  her  railing  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  despite  Arthur's  protesta- 
tions.    She  said  that  she  was  invited  out  to  dinner. 


BEATRIX  497 

She  requested  her  unfaithful  swain  to  go  from  her 
house  to  the  Italiens,  saying  that  she  was  going  to  a 
first  night  at  the  Ambigu-Comique,  where  she  was 
to  meet  a  charming  woman,  Madame  de  la  Baudraye, 
Lousteau's  mistress.  Arthur  proposed,  as  a  proof 
of  his  undying  attachment  to  his  little  Aurelie  and 
of  his  aversion  for  his  wife,  to  start  the  next  day 
for  Italy,  and  to  live  with  her  as  her  husband  at 
Rome,  Naples,  Florence,  wherever  she  chose,  offer- 
ing her  as  a  gift  sixty  thousand  francs  a  year. 

"That's  all  fudge,"  said  she.  "That  won't  prevent 
you  from  making  up  with  your  wife,  and  it's  the 
best  thing  you  can  do." 

Arthur  and  Aurelie  parted  after  this  ominous  dia- 
logue, he,  to  go  and  dine  and  play  at  the  club,  she, 
to  dress  and  pass  the  evening  t§te-^-t§te  with 
Fabien. 

Monsieur  de  Rochefide  found  Maxime  at  the  club 
and  complained  to  him,  like  a  man  who  felt  that  a 
felicity  whose  roots  were  twined  about  all  the  fibres 
of  his  heart,  was  being  uprooted.  Maxime  listened 
to  the  marquis's  lamentations,  as  courteous  people 
can  listen  while  thinking  of  something  entirely  dif- 
ferent 

"I  am  a  good  adviser  in  such  matters  as  this,  my 
good  friend,"  he  said.  "In  the  first  place,  you  are 
taking  the  wrong  tack  in  allowing  Aurelie  to  see 
how  dear  she  is  to  you.  Let  me  present  you  to 
Madame  Antonia.  There's  a  heart  to  let.  You  will 
see  La  Schontz  sing  a  very  different  tune.  She  is 
thirty-seven,  is  your  Schontz,  and  Madame  Antonia 
32 


498  BEATRIX 

is  not  more  than  twenty-six !  and  such  a  woman ! 
all  her  sense  is  not  in  her  head,  I  promise  you! — 
Moreover,  she  is  my  pupil.  If  Madame  Schontz  con- 
tinues to  ride  a  high  horse,  do  you  know  what  that 
will  mean?" 

"Faith,  I  do  not" 

"It  may  mean  that  she  proposes  to  marry,  and  in 
that  case  nothing  can  prevent  her  leaving  you. 
After  a  six  years'  lease,  the  woman  certainly  has 
the  right  to  do  it  But,  if  you  care  to  follow  my 
advice,  there's  a  still  better  course  for  you  to  follow. 
Your  wife  to-day  is  a  thousand  times  better  than  all 
the  Schontzes  and  Antonias  in  Quartier  Saint- 
Georges.  It's  a  difficult  conquest  to  make,  but  it's 
not  impossible  and  she  would  make  you  as  happy 
as  an  Orgon !  At  all  events,  if  you  don't  want  to 
appear  like  an  idiot,  you  must  come  and  take  supper 
at  Antonia's  to-night." 

"No,  I  care  too  much  for  Aurelie;  I  don't  propose 
to  give  her  the  slightest  excuse  for  reproaching 
me." 

"Ah !  my  dear  man,  what  a  life  you  are  preparing 
for  yourself!"  cried  Maxime. 

"It  is  eleven  o'clock;  she  must  have  returned 
from  the  Ambigu,"  said  Rochefide,  taking  his 
leave. 

And  he  shouted  fiercely  to  his  coachman  to  drive 
at  full  speed  to  Rue  de  la  Bruy^re. 

Madame  Schontz  had  given  precise  instructions, 
and  monsieur  was  allowed  to  enter  just  as  if  there 
were  a  perfect  understanding  between  himself  and 


BEATRIX  499 

madame;  but,  when  she  was  advised  of  monsieur's 
return,  madame  arranged  matters  so  that  monsieur 
should  hear  the  noise  made  by  her  dressing-room 
door  closing  as  doors  close  when  women  are  taken 
by  surprise.  In  addition,  Fabien's  hat,  which  had 
been  purposely  forgotten  and  left  on  a  corner  of  the 
piano,  was  very  awkwardly  removed  by  the  maid, 
just  as  the  interview  between  monsieur  and  ma- 
dame began. 

"Haven't  you  been  to  the  Ambigu,  darling.?" 

"No,  my  dear,  1  changed  my  mind;  I  have  been 
playing  the  piano." 

"Who  has  been  to  call  on  you.?"  said  the  marquis 
affably,  as  he  saw  the  maid  carry  away  the  hat 

"Why,  no  one." 

At  that  unblushing  falsehood,  Arthur  hung  his 
head ;  he  was  passing  under  the  Caudine  Forks  of 
complaisance.  True  love  has  its  cowardice.  Ar- 
thur behaved  with  Madame  Schontz  as  Sabine  did 
with  Calyste  and  Calyste  with  Beatrix. 


Within  a  week,  a  metamorphosis  as  complete  as 
that  from  chrysalis  to  butterfly  took  place  in  the 
clever  and  handsome  young  Charles-Edouard, 
Comte  Rusticoli  de  la  Palferine,  the  hero  of  the 
Scene  entitled  A  Prince  of  Bohemia, — See  SCENES 
OF  Parisian  Life, — which  fact  relieves  us  from  the 
necessity  of  drawing  his  portrait  and  describing  his 
character  here.  Hitherto  he  had  lived  in  wretched 
fashion,  piling  up  debts  with  Danton-like  audacity; 
but  now  he  paid  his  debts,  he  procured,  in  accord- 
ance with  Maxime's  advice,  a  little  low  carriage, 
he  was  admitted  to  the  Jockey  Club  and  to  the  club 
on  Rue  de  Grammont,  he  became  ultra-fashionable ; 
and  lastly,  he  published  a  short  story  in  the  Journal 
des  Debats  which  gave  him  in  a  few  days  such  a 
reputation  as  professional  authors  do  not  obtain 
after  years  of  hard  work  and  success;  for  nothing 
rages  so  fiercely  at  Paris  as  that  which  is  destined 
to  be  ephemeral. 

Nathan,  who  was  very  certain  that  the  count 
would  never  publish  anything  of  importance,  spoke 
in  such  laudatory  terms  of  this  charming  and  imper- 
tinent young  man  at  Madame  de  Rochefide's,  that 
that  lady,  spurred  on  by  the  poet's  eulogy,  mani- 
fested a  desire  to  see  this  youthful  king  of  the  fash- 
ionable vagabonds  of  the  day. 

"He  will  be  all  the  more  enchanted  to  come  here," 
(501) 


502  BEATRIX 

said  Nathan,  "because,  as  I  happen  to  know,  he  is 
so  madly  in  love  with  you  that  he  would  do  any 
crazy  thing  under  heaven." 

"But  he  has  already  done  everything  there  is  to 
do,  so  I  hear." 

"Everything.?  No,"  rejoined  Nathan,  "he  hasn't 
yet  fallen  in  love  with  a  virtuous  woman." 

Some  few  days  after  the  plot  formed  upon  Boule- 
vard des  Italiens  by  Maxime  and  the  fascinating 
Comte  Charles-Edouard,  that  young  man,  to  whom 
nature  had  given,  in  jest,  doubtless,  a  deliciously 
melancholy  face,  made  his  first  incursion  into  the 
nest  of  the  white  dove  on  Rue  de  Courcelles,  who 
chose  an  evening  to  receive  him  when  Calyste  was 
obliged  to  perform  some  social  duty  with  his  wife. 
When  you  meet  La  Palferine,  or  when  you  reach 
A  Prince  of  Bohemia,  in  the  third  Book  of  this  long 
history  of  our  manners,  you  will  understand  per- 
fectly the  success  achieved  in  a  single  evening  by 
that  sparkling  wit,  by  that  incredible  animation, 
especially  if  you  form  a  just  idea  of  the  skilful 
manoeuvring  of  the  showman,  who  consented  to 
assist  him  upon  this  occasion.  Nathan  was  a  good 
fellow;  he  brought  out  the  young  count's  brilliant 
points,  as  a  jeweler,  exhibiting  his  wares,  holds 
them  so  that  the  diamonds  will  catch  the  light 

La  Palferine  discreetly  left  the  house  first;  he 
left  Nathan  and  the  marchioness  together,  relying 
upon  the  collaboration  of  the  famous  author,  who 
played  his  part  to  admiration.  Seeing  that  the 
marchioness  was  fairly  bewildered,  he  kindled  a  fire 


BEATRIX  503 

in  her  heart  by  eloquent  reticences  which  stirred 
fibres  of  curiosity  within  her,  of  whose  existence 
she  had  no  idea.  Nathan  gave  her  to  understand 
also  that  La  Palferine's  success  with  women  was 
due  not  so  much  to  his  wit  as  to  his  superiority  in 
the  art  of  love,  and  he  exaggerated  it  beyond 
measure. 

This  is  a  fitting  place  to  call  attention  to  a  novel 
result  of  the  great  law  of  contrasts  which  determines 
many  crises  in  the  human  heart  and  explains  so 
many  eccentricities,  that  we  are  compelled  to  re- 
member it  sometimes  as  well  as  the  law  of  simili- 
tudes. Courtesans — to  embrace  the  whole  class  of 
females  who  are  baptized,  unbaptized  and  rebaptized 
every  quarter  of  a  century — all  retain  at  the  bot- 
tom of  their  hearts  a  constantly  increasing  desire  to 
recover  their  liberty,  to  love  purely,  nobly  and 
piously  a  man  to  whom  they  sacrifice  everything. 
— See  Splendors  and  Miseries  of  Courtesans.  They 
feel  that  antithetical  need  so  forcibly,  that  it  is  a 
rare  thing  to  meet  one  of  these  women  who  has  not 
more  than  once  aspired  to  attain  virtue  by  way  of 
love.  They  do  not  lose  courage  although  they  are 
shockingly  deceived.  On  the  other  hand,  women 
who  are  held  in  check  by  their  education,  by  their 
social  position,  enchained  by  the  nobility  of  their 
family,  living  in  the  bosom  of  opulence  and  wearing 
a  halo  of  virtue,  are  attracted,  in  secret  of  course, 
toward  the  tropical  regions  of  love.  These  two 
feminine  natures,  so  sharply  contrasted,  have, 
therefore,  at  the  bottom  of  their  hearts,  the  one  a 


504  BEATRIX 

craving  for  virtue,  the  other  that  slight  tendency  to 
libertinage  which  Jean- Jacques  Rousseau  first  had 
the  courage  to  point  out.  In  the  one  case,  it  is  the  last 
reflection  of  the  divine  ray  that  is  not  yet  extinct; 
in  the  other,  the  last  remnant  of  our  primitive  filth. 

This  last  claw  of  the  beast  was  sharpened,  this 
particular  hair  in  the  devil's  head  was  pulled  by 
Nathan  with  consummate  skill.  The  marchioness 
began  to  wonder  in  good  earnest  if,  hitherto,  she  had 
not  been  the  dupe  of  her  own  brain,  if  her  education 
was  complete. 

Vice! — perhaps  it  is  simply  the  desire  to  know 
everything.  The  next  day,  Calyste  appeared  to 
Beatrix  in  his  true  light;  a  loyal,  perfect  gentle- 
man, but  devoid  of  spirit  or  wit  At  Paris,  a  man 
to  be  called  clever,  should  be  supplied  with  wit  as 
fountains  are  with  water,  for  men  of  the  world 
and  Parisian  men  are,  as  a  general  rule,  clever; 
but  Calyste  loved  too  dearly,  he  was  too  thor- 
oughly absorbed  by  his  love,  to  notice  the  change 
in  Beatrix  and  to  amend  matters  by  displaying  fresh 
resources ;  he  seemed  very  pale  in  the  reflection  of 
the  preceding  evening,  and  did  not  arouse  the  slight- 
est emotion  in  the  famished  Beatrix. 

A  great  love  is  equivalent  to  giving  unlimited 
credit  to  such  a  voracious  force  that  the  moment  of 
bankruptcy  always  comes  at  last.  Despite  the 
weariness  of  that  day — the  day  when  a  woman  feels 
bored  to  death  with  a  lover! — Beatrix  shuddered 
with  fear  at  the  thought  of  a  meeting  between  La 
Palferine,  the  successor  of  Maxime  de  Trailles,  and 


BEATRIX  505 

Calyste,  a  man  of  courage  wholly  devoid  of  bravado. 
She  hesitated,  therefore,  about  seeing  the  young 
count  again;  but  the  knot  was  cut  in  a  decisive 
fashion. 

Beatrix  had  taken  a  third  of  a  dark  box  on  the 
lower  tier  at  the  Italiens,  in  order  not  to  be  seen. 
For  some  days  past,  Calyste  had  boldly  escorted  the 
marchioness  to  the  theatre  and  stationed  himself 
behind  her  in  the  box,  arranging  to  arrive  so  late 
that  no  one  would  see  them.  Beatrix  went  out 
among  the  first,  before  the  end  of  the  last  act,  and 
Calyste  followed  her  at  a  distance,  keeping  watch 
upon  her  although  old  Antoine  came  to  drive  his 
mistress  home.  Maxime  and  La  Palferine  observed 
this  strategy,  inspired  by  respect  for  the  proprieties, 
by  that  need  of  concealment  which  distinguishes  the 
idolaters  of  the  Eternal  Child,  and  also  by  the 
fear  that  weighs  upon  all  women  who  were  once 
planets  in  the  social  world,  but  whom  love  has 
caused  to  abdicate  their  places  in  the  zodiac. 
Humiliation  is  then  dreaded  as  a  suffering  more  cruel 
than  death;  but  this  agony  of  pride,  this  affront, 
which  women  who  have  retained  their  rank  in 
Olympus  hurl  down  at  those  who  have  fallen,  took 
place  under  most  shocking  conditions,  through  the 
efforts  of  Maxime. 

At  a  performance  of  Lucia,  which  ends,  as  every- 
one knows,  in  one  of  Rubini's  most  notable  tri- 
umphs, Madame  de  Rochefide,  whom  Antoine  had 
not  notified  of  his  arrival,  reached  the  peristyle  of 
the  theatre  from  her  corridor,  when  the  stairways 


506  BEATRIX 

were  crowded  with  pretty  women,  standing  one 
above  another  on  the  stairs  or  grouped  at  the  foot, 
waiting  for  their  servants  to  announce  their  car- 
riages. Beatrix  was  recognized  by  all  eyes  at  once, 
and  there  was  a  general  whispering  among  the 
various  groups.  In  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  the 
crowd  melted  away,  and  the  marchioness  was  left 
alone  like  a  plague-stricken  creature. 

Calyste,  seeing  his  wife  on  one  of  the  stairways, 
did  not  dare  to  join  the  culprit,  and  twice  Beatrix 
vainly  begged  him  to  come  to  her  by  a  piteous  glance 
from  eyes  that  were  wet  with  tears.  At  that  moment, 
La  Palferine,  fashionably  dressed,  superb,  fascinat- 
ing, left  two  ladies  with  whom  he  was  talking, 
went  up  to  the  marchioness,  bowed  politely  and  be- 
gan to  talk  with  her. 

"Take  my  arm  and  leave  the  theatre  with  head 
erect,"  said  he;  "I  can  find  your  carriage." 

**Will  you  come  and  pass  the  rest  of  the  evening 
with  me?"  she  answered,  entering  her  carriage 
and  making  room  for  him  by  her  side. 

"Follow  madame's  carriage!"  La  Palferine  said 
to  his  groom,  as  he  took  his  place  beside  Beatrix,  to 
the  stupefaction  of  Calyste,  who  stood  rooted  to  the 
ground  as  if  his  legs  were  made  of  lead ;  for  it  was 
the  sight  of  his  pale,  horror-stricken  face  that  led 
Beatrix  to  ask  the  young  count  to  accompany  her. 
All  doves  are  Robespierres  with  white  feathers. 

Three  carriages  drove  to  Rue  de  Courcelles  with 
startling  rapidity;  Calyste's,  La  Palferine's  and 
Madame  de  Rochefide's. 


BEATRIX  507 

"Ah!  you  here?"  said  Beatrix,  entering  her  salon 
leaning  on  the  young  count's  arm  and  finding  Calyste 
there,  his  horse  having  outstripped  the  others. 

"So  you  know  monsieur,  do  you?"  Calyste  de- 
manded fiercely. 

"Monsieur  le  Comte  de  la  Palferine  was  presented 
to  me  ten  days  ago  by  Nathan,"  replied  Beatrix, 
"and  you,  monsieur,  have  known  me  four  years." 

"And  I  am  ready,  madame,"  said  Charles- 
Edouard,  "to  visit  Madame  la  Marquise  d'Espard's 
sins  upon  her  grandchildren  to  the  third  and  fourth 
generation,  for  she  was  the  first  to  move  away 
from  you—" 

"Ah!  it  was  sA^/"  cried  Beatrix;  "Iwillbeeven 
with  her  for  that" 

"To  avenge  you,  we  must  reconquer  your  hus- 
band; but  I  am  capable  of  bringing  him  back  to 
you,"  said  the  young  man  in  her  ear. 

The  conversation  thus  begun,  lasted  until  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  nor  did  Calyste,  whose 
frenzy  was  constantly  forced  back  by  Beatrix's 
glances,  obtain  an  opportunity  to  say  two  words  to 
her  aside.  La  Palferine,  who  did  not  love  Beatrix, 
was  as  superior  to  the  average  man  in  good  taste, 
wit  and  grace  of  manner,  as  Calyste  was  inferior  in 
all  those  qualities.  The  Breton  twisted  about  on 
the  chair  like  a  worm  cut  in  two,  and  rose  to  his 
feet  three  times  to  strike  La  Palferine.  The  third 
time  that  Calyste  made  a  spring  toward  his  rival, 
the  young  count  greeted  him  with  an:  "Aren't 
you  feeling  well,  Monsieur  le  Baron?"  that  drove 


508  BEATRIX 

Calyste  back  to  his  chair,  where  he  sat  like  a  stone 
post  The  marchioness  conversed  with  the  self- 
possession  of  a  Celim^ne,  pretending  not  to  know 
that  Calyste  was  there.  La  Palferine  showed  the 
most  consummate  adroitness  by  taking  his  depart- 
ure with  an  extremely  witty  remark,  leaving  the 
lovers  at  odds. 

Thus,  by  Maxime's  address,  the  torch  of  discord 
was  blazing  in  the  secondary  establishments  of  both 
Monsieur  and  Madame  de  Rochefide. 

The  next  day,  upon  learning  of  the  success  of 
this  scene  from  La  Palferine  at  the  Jockey  Club, 
where  the  young  count  was  playing  whist  with 
much  success,  Maxime  repaired  to  the  Hotel  Schontz 
on  Rue  de  la  Bruy^re,  to  ascertain  how  Aurelie  was 
handling  her  vessel. 

"My  dear,"  laughed  Madame  Schontz  when  Max- 
ime appeared,  "I  am  at  the  end  of  all  my  expedients. 
Rochefide  is  incurable.  I  bring  my  career  of  gal- 
lantry to  a  close  with  the  discovery  that  intelligence 
is  a  drawback." 

"Explain  that  remark." 

"In  the  first  place,  my  dear  friend,  I  kept  my 
Arthur  for  a  week  on  a  diet  of  kicks  in  the  bones  of 
the  leg,  of  the  most  patriotic  vexations,  and  of  all 
the  most  disagreeable  things  we  know  in  our  trade. 
*You  must  be  ill,'  he  would  say  with  fatherly  gen- 
tleness, 'for  I  have  never  been  anything  but  kind  to 
you,  and  I  love  you  to  adoration.' — *You  are  wrong, 
my  dear,'  I  answered,  'you  bore  me.' — 'Very  well, 
don't  you  have  the  cleverest  men  and  the  smartest 


BEATRIX  509 

youngsters  in  Paris  to  amuse  you  ?*  the  poor  fellow 
replied.  I  was  silenced.  I  felt  then  that  I  loved 
him." 

"Aha!"  said  Maxime. 

"What  would  you  have?  it's  stronger  than  we 
are;  we  can't  resist  such  things  as  that  I  changed 
my  tune  and  began  to  make  eyes  at  my  judicial  wild 
boar,  my  future  spouse,  changed  like  Arthur  into  a 
sheep ;  I  made  him  sit  there  on  Rochefide's  couch, 
and  I  found  him  a  great  idiot  How  bored  I  was! 
but  I  had  to  have  Fabien  there  in  order  to  be  sur- 
prised with  him." 

"Well,  well,"  cried  Maxime,  "come  to  the  point 
then — Well,  when  Rochefide  surprised  you — ?" 

"You  are  not  in  it,  my  good  man.  According  to 
your  instructions,  the  banns  are  published,  our  con- 
tract is  being  drawn,  so  Notre-Dame  de  Lorette  has 
nothing  to  say.  When  there  has  been  a  promise 
of  marriage,  it's  all  right  to  give  earnest  money. 
When  he  surprised  Fabien  and  me,  poor 
Arthur  stole  out  into  the  dining-room  on  tip-toe  and 
began  to  go  Broum!  broum!  coughing  and  knocking 
chairs  about  That  great  clown  of  a  Fabien  was 
afraid,  for  I  can't  tell  him  everything — 

'And  at  that  point,  dear  Maxime,  the  matter  now  rests — ' 

If  Arthur  should  find  two  of  us  some  morning 
on  coming  into  my  room,  he  is  quite  capable  of 
saying :  '  Have  you  passed  a  comfortable  night,  my 
children.?'" 


5IO  BEATRIX 

Maxime  shook  his  head  and  played  with  his  cane 
for  some  moments. 

"I  have  heard  of  such  characters,"  he  said. 
*'This  is  the  way  we  must  deal  with  them;  there 
is  nothing  left  for  us  to  do  but  to  throw  Arthur  out 
of  the  window  and  lock  the  door.  When  will  you 
repeat  your  last  scene  with  Fabien?" 

"That's  too  much!  for  the  sacrament  hasn't  yet 
given  us  its  sanction." 

"You  will  place  yourself  so  that  you  can  ex- 
change a  glance  with  Arthur  when  he  takes  you  by 
surprise  again, "  Maxime  continued ;  "if  he  is  angry, 
that's  all  we  want  If  he  says :  Broum !  hroum ! 
again,  why  there's  a  still  better  way  of  ending  it — " 

"How?" 

"Why,  you  must  lose  your  temper  and  say:  'I 
thought  that  you  had  some  affection  and  esteem  for 
me;  but  you  haven't  any  feeling  for  me  at  all ;  you 
are  not  even  jealous' — you  know  the  story!  'In 
such  a  case,  Maxime' — you  can  bring  me  in — 'would 
kill  his  man  on  the  spot' — weep  a  little  here. — 'And 
Fabien' — put  him  to  shame  by  comparing  him  to 
Fabien — 'Fabien,  whom  I  love,  would  draw  a  dagger 
and  plunge  it  into  your  heart  Ah!  that  is  true 
love!  So,  adieu,  good-night,  take  back  your  house, 
I  propose  to  marry  Fabien,  he  will  give  me  his 
name!  he  tramples  on  his  old  mother! — '  In  short, 
you  must — " 

"I  see!  I  see!  I  will  be  superb!"  cried  Madame 
Schontz.  "Ah!  Maxime,  there  will  never  be  but 
one  Maxime,  as  there  is  only  one  De  Marsay. " 


BEATRIX  511 

"La  Palferine  is  greater  than  I  am,"  said  the 
Comte  de  Trailles  modestly;  "he  is  going  on 
finely." 

"He  has  the  tongue,  but  you  have  the  wrist  and 
the  loins !  How  much  you  have  endured !  how  you 
have  held  your  own!"  said  La  Schontz. 

"La  Palferine  has  everything;  he  is  very  deep 
and  well-informed;  while  I  am  ignorant,"  replied 
Maxime. — "I  saw  Rastignac,  who  at  once  arranged 
matters  with  the  Keeper  of  the  Seals;  Fabien  will 
be  appointed  president,  and  officer  of  the  Legion  of 
Honor  after  a  year's  probation." 

"I  will  turn  pious!"  Madame  Schontz  rejoined, 
emphasizing  the  words  in  a  way  that  brought  forth 
a  nod  of  approval  from  Maxime. 

"Priests  are  worth  more  than  we  are,"  he  replied. 

"Ah!  indeed.?"  said  Madame  Schontz.  "Then  I 
may  meet  somebody  1  can  talk  to  in  the  provinces. 
I  have  begun  my  role.  Fabien  has  already  told  his 
mother  that  the  divine  grace  has  illumined  my 
mind,  and  he  has  fascinated  the  excellent  soul  with 
my  million  and  the  title  of  Madame  la  Presidente; 
she  consents  to  let  us  live  with  her,  she  has  asked 
for  my  portrait  and  has  sent  me  hers :  if  Love  should 
glance  at  it  he  would  fall — backwards!  Away  with 
you,  Maxime;  to-night  I  am  going  to  execute  my 
poor  man,  and  it  breaks  my  heart." 

Two  days  later,  Charles-hdouard  said  to  Maxime, 
as  they  met  in  the  doorway  of  the  Jockey  Club: 

"It  is  done!" 

That  sentence,  which  contained  a  whole  ghastly, 


512  BEATRIX 

terrifying  drama,  often  performed  for  revenge, 
made  the  Comte  de  Trailles  smile. 

"We  are  about  to  hear  Rochefide's  lamentations," 
said  Maxime,  **for  you  and  Aurelie  have  accom- 
plished your  objects  simultaneously!  Aurelie  has 
turned  Arthur  out  of  doors  and  now  we  must  take 
charge  of  him ;  he  must  give  Madame  du  Ronceret 
three  hundred  thousand  francs  and  return  to  his 
wife;  we  have  to  prove  to  him  that  Beatrix  is 
superior  to  Aurelie." 

"We  have  a  good  ten  days  before  us,"  said 
Charles-j^douard  in  a  meaning  tone,  "and  that  is 
none  too  much  in  all  conscience;  for,  now  that  I 
know  the  marchioness,  the  poor  man  shall  be  hand- 
somely plucked." 

"What  will  you  do  when  the  bomb  bursts?" 

"Presence  of  mind  always  comes  when  one  has 
time  to  seek  it,  and  I  am  especially  superb  in  pre- 
paring myself  to  meet  emergencies." 

The  two  gamblers  entered  the  salon  together  and 
found  the  Marquis  de  Rochefide  apparently  two 
years  older ;  he  had  not  put  on  his  corsets  and  had 
sacrificed  the  pride  of  his  heart,  his  long  beard. 

"Well,  my  dear  marquis?" — said  Maxime. 

"Ah!  my  dear  fellow,  my  life  is  ruined." 

Arthur  talked  for  ten  minutes  and  Maxime  listened 
to  him  with  a  sober  face ;  he  was  thinking  of  his 
wedding,  which  was  to  take  place  within  the  week. 

"My  dear  Arthur,  I  suggested  to  you  the  only 
method  I  knew  of  keeping  Aurelie  and  you  wouldn't 
accept  the  suggestion." 


BEATRIX  513 

"What  was  that?" 

"Didn't  I  advise  you  to  go  and  sup  with  An- 
tonia?" 

"You  did — But  what  was  I  to  do?  I  really  love 
Aurelie, — and  you  make  love  as  Grisier  fences." 

"Hark  ye,  Arthur;  give  her  three  hundred  thou- 
sand francs  for  her  little  house,  and  I  will  undertake 
to  find  you  a  better  woman  than  she  is. — I'll  talk 
to  you  later  about  the  fair  unknown,  I  see  D'Ajuda 
coming  to  speak  to  me." 

And  Maxime  left  the  inconsolable  lover  to  meet 
the  representative  of  a  family  that  needed  consola- 
tion. 

"My  dear  fellow,"  said  the  other  marquis  in 
Maxime's  ear,  "the  duchess  is  in  despair.  Calyste 
has  had  his  trunks  packed  secretly  and  has  taken  a 
passport  Sabine  insists  upon  following  the  fugi- 
tives, taking  Beatrix  by  surprise  and  clawing  her 
eyes  out.  She  is  enceinte,  and  it  begins  to  look  de- 
cidedly like  a  murderous  purpose  on  her  part,  as  she 
has  purchased  pistols  openly." 

"Tell  the  duchess  that  Madame  de  Rochefide  won't 
go,  and  that  it  will  be  all  over  in  a  fortnight.  Now, 
D'Ajuda,  your  hand.  Neither  you  nor  I  have  ever 
said  a  word  or  known  anything  of  this  matter!  we 
will  look  on  admiringly  at  the  hazards  of  life!" 

"The  duchess  has  already  made  me  swear  on  the 
Gospel  and  the  crucifix  to  hold  my  tongue." 

"You  will  receive  my  wife  a  month  hence?" 

"With  pleasure." 

"Everybody  will    be   satisfied,"   said    Maxime. 
33 


514  BEATRIX 

"But  advise  the  duchess  of  one  little  circumstance 
that  will  delay  her  journey  to  Italy  for  six  weeks; 
it's  something  that  concerns  Monsieur  du  Guenic — 
you  will  know  later." 

"What  is  it?"  said  D'Ajuda,  glancing  at  La  Pal- 
ferine. 

"Socrates  remarked  before  setting  out :  *We  owe 
a  cock  to  iCsculapius ;'  but  your  brother-in-law  will 
be  let  off  for  the  comb,"  said  La  Palferine  without 
winking. 


For  ten  days,  Calyste  was  crushed  under  the 
weight  of  a  wrath  that  was  the  more  implacable  be- 
cause it  was  increased  tenfold  by  a  genuine  passion. 
Beatrix  had  fallen  a  victim  to  the  love  so  brutally 
but  so  faithfully  described  to  the  Duchesse  de 
Grandlieu  by  Maxime  de  Trailles.  It  may  be  said 
that  there  are  no  well-organized  beings  who  do  not 
experience  that  terrible  passion  once  in  the  course 
of  their  lives.  The  marchioness  felt  that  she  was 
subjugated  by  a  superior  force,  by  a  young  man 
who  was  not  awed  by  her  rank,  who,  being  as 
nobly  born  as  she,  watched  her  with  a  calm,  over- 
bearing eye,  and  from  whom  her  most  determined 
efforts  as  a  woman  could  with  difficulty  extort  an 
approving  smile.  In  a  word,  she  was  oppressed  by 
a  tyrant  who  never  parted  from  her  that  he  did  not 
leave  her  weeping,  wounded  and  believing  that  she 
had  been  wronged. 

Charles-Edouard  played  the  same  comedy  with 
Beatrix  that  Beatrix  had  been  playing  for  six 
months  with  Calyste.  Since  her  public  humilia- 
tion at  the  Italiens,  Beatrix  had  never  swerved  from 
this  proposition  to  Monsieur  du  Guenic : 

"You  preferred   society  and   your  wife  to  me, 
therefore  you  do  not  love  me.     If  you  want  to  con- 
vince me  that  you  do  love  me,  sacrifice  your  wife 
(515) 


5l6  BEATRIX 

and  society  to  me.  Abandon  Sabine  and  let  us  go 
to  Switzerland,  Italy  or  Germany  to  live!" 

Basing  her  action  upon  this  harsh  ultimatum,  she 
had  established  a  blockade  as  women  do,  with  cold 
looks,  disdainful  gestures  and  the  frowning  aspect  of 
a  fortress.  She  thought  that  she  was  free  from  Ca- 
lyste,  for  she  did  not  believe  that  he  would  dare 
break  with  the  Grandlieus.  To  leave  Sabine,  to 
whom  Mademoiselle  des  Touches  had  given  her  for- 
tune, would  be  to  assume  the  burden  of  poverty, 
would  it  not?  But  Calyste,  wild  with  despair,  had 
secretly  taken  passports,  and  had  written  to  his 
mother,  asking  her  to  send  him  a  considerable  sum. 
Pending  the  arrival  of  the  funds,  he  watched  Beatrix, 
the  victim  of  Breton  jealousy  in  all  its  fury. 

At  last,  nine  days  after  La  Palferine's  momentous 
communication  to  Maxime  at  the  club,  the  baron,  to 
whom  his  mother  had  sent  thirty  thousand  francs, 
rushed  to  Beatrix's  house  with  the  intention  of 
forcing  the  blockade,  expelling  La  Palferine  and 
leaving  Paris  with  his  appeased  idol.  It  was  one  of 
those  terrible  crises,  when  women  who  have  pre- 
served some  little  self-respect  plunge  into  the  depths 
of  vice  forever;  in  rare  instances  only  do  they 
return  to  a  virtuous  life.  Hitherto  Madame  de 
Rochefide  had  esteemed  herself  a  virtuous  woman 
into  whose  heart  two  passions  had  entered;  but 
to  allow  herself  to  be  made  love  to  by  Calyste 
while  she  adored  Charles-Edouard  would  be  to  for- 
feit her  own  esteem;  for  where  falsehood  begins,  in- 
famy begins.     She  had  given  Calyste  rights  over 


BEATRIX  517 

her  and  no  human  power  could  prevent  the  Breton 
from  throwing  himself  at  her  feet  and  watering 
them  with  the  tears  of  absolute  repentance. 

Many  people  wonder  at  the  frigid  insensibility 
with  which  women  extinguish  their  passions ;  but, 
if  they  did  not  thus  efface  the  past,  life  would  be 
without  dignity  for  them,  they  could  never  resist 
the  fatal  familiarity  to  which  they  had  once  sub- 
mitted. In  the  entirely  novel  situation  in  which 
she  found  herself,  Beatrix  would  have  been  saved  if 
La  Palferine  had  come;  but  old  Antoine's  shrewd- 
ness was  her  undoing. 

Hearing  a  carriage  stop  at  the  door,  she  said  to 
Calyste : 

"Some  one  is  coming!" 

And  she  hurried  to  the  door  to  prevent  a  scene. 

Antoine,  like  the  prudent  serving-man  he  was, 
said  to  Charles-Edouard,  who  had  come  for  no  other 
purpose  than  to  hear  those  very  words : 

"Madame  la  Marquise  has  gone  out!" 

When  Beatrix  learned  from  her  old  servant  who 
the  visitor  was  and  what  answer  he  had  given  him, 
she  said:  "Very  well !"  and  returned  to  the  salon, 
saying  to  herself: 

"1  will  turn  nun!" 

Calyste,  who  had  taken  the  liberty  of  opening 
the  window,  caught  sight  of  his  rival. 

"Who  came.?"  he  asked. 

"I  don't  know;  Antoine  is  still  downstairs." 

"It  was  La  Palferine — " 

"That  may  be—" 


5l8  BEATRIX 

"You  love  him  and  that  is  why  you  are  constantly 
finding  fault  with  me.     I  saw  him !" 

"You  saw  him?" 

"I  opened  the  window — " 

Beatrix  fell  upon  her  couch  like  a  dead  woman. 
Then  she  paltered  with  her  conscience  in  order  to 
have  a  to-morrow  in  which  to  set  matters  straight; 
she  postponed  their  departure  a  week  on  the  pretext 
of  important  business,  and  took  an  oath  to  herself  to 
forbid  Calyste  her  door  if  she  could  appease  La  Pal- 
ferine,  for  such  are  the  ghastly  intrigues  and  burning 
anguish  concealed  in  such  lives  as  these,  that  have 
left  the  rails  upon  which  the  great  social  fabric  runs. 

When  Beatrix  was  alone,  she  was  so  wretched,  so 
profoundly  humiliated,  that  she  went  to  bed:  she 
was  ill ;  the  violent  contest  that  had  torn  her  heart 
seemed  to  her  to  be  followed  by  a  horrible  reaction, 
and  she  sent  for  her  doctor ;  but,  at  the  same  time, 
she  sent  La  Palferine  the  following  note,  in  which 
she  took  her  revenge  upon  Calyste  with  a  species 
of  frenzy : 

"  Come  to  see  me,  my  friend ;  I  am  in  despair,  Antoine 
turned  you  away  when  your  appearance  would  have  put  an 
end  to  one  of  the  most  horrible  nightmares  of  my  life,  by 
delivering  me  from  a  man  I  hate  and  whom,  I  trust,  I  shall 
never  see  again.  I  love  no  one  in  the  world  but  you,  and  I 
shall  never  love  any  but  you,  although  I  am  unfortunate 
enough  not  to  please  you  as  I  would  like  to  do — '* 

She  wrote  four  pages  which,  after  this  beginning, 
concluded   with    an   exalted    peroration    much  too 


BEATRIX  519 

poetic  to  be  put  in  type,  in  which  she  compromised 
herself  so  completely  that  she  brought  it  to  a  close 
with:  "Am  I  sufficiently  at  your  mercy?  Ah! 
nothing  would  cost  me  too  much  to  prove  to  you  how 
dear  you  are  to  me!"  And  she  signed  her  name, 
something  that  she  had  never  done  for  Calyste  or 
for  Conti. 

The  next  day,  when  the  young  count  called  upon 
the  marchioness,  she  was  in  her  bath,  and  Antoine 
requested  him  to  wait.  In  his  turn,  he  caused  Ca- 
lyste to  be  turned  away, — for  the  young  Breton 
came  early,  starving  for  love, — and,  from  the  win- 
dow, watched  him  enter  his  carriage  in  desperation. 

"Ah!  Charles,"  said  the  marchioness  as  she  en- 
tered the  salon,  "you  have  ruined  me!" 

"I  am  well  aware  of  it,  madame,"  rejoined  La 
Palferine,  calmly.  "You  have  sworn  to  me  that  you 
loved  me  alone,  you  have  offered  to  give  me  a  letter 
setting  forth  the  reasons  you  have  for  killing  your- 
self, so  that  in  case  of  your  infidelity  I  might  poison 
you  without  having  anything  to  fear  from  human 
justice,  as  if  men  of  superior  mould  needed  to  resort 
to  poison  to  revenge  themselves.  You  wrote  to  me : 
'Nothing  would  cost  me  too  much  to  prove  to  you 
how  dear  you  are  to  me !' — Do  you  know  I  detect  a 
contradiction  to  the  concluding  words  of  your  letter 
in  that  phrase :  You  have  ruined  me  ! — I  shall  know 
now  whether  you  have  had  the  courage  to  break 
with  Du  Guenic — " 

"Ah !  you  had  your  revenge  on  him  beforehand, " 
she  said,    throwing  her    arms    around   his   neck. 


520  BEATRIX 

"And,  as  a  result  of  this  affair,  you  and  I  are  bound 
together  forever." 

"Madame, "  rejoined  the  Prince  of  Bohemia  coldly, 
"if  you  wish  me  for  a  friend,  I  consent;  but  on  con- 
dition—" 

"Conditions?" 

"Yes,  on  these  conditions.  You  will  be  recon- 
ciled to  Monsieur  de  Rochefide,  you  will  recover  the 
honorable  position  to  which  you  are  entitled,  you 
will  return  to  your  fine  house  on  Rue  d'Anjou,  you 
will  become  one  of  the  queens  of  Paris;  you  can  do 
it  by  making  Rochefide  play  a  part  in  politics,  and 
by  displaying  in  your  conduct  the  same  shrewdness 
and  persistence  as  Madame  d'Espard  has  exhibited. 
That  is  the  situation  a  woman  should  occupy  upon 
whom  I  confer  the  honor  of  giving  myself  to  her — " 

"But  you  forget  that  Monsieur  de  Rochefide's 
consent  is  necessary." 

"Oh!  my  dear  child,  "said  La  Palferine,  "we  have 
prepared  him  for  you;  I  have  pledged  him  my  faith 
as  a  gentleman  that  you  are  worth  all  the  Schontzes 
in  Quartier  Saint-Georges,  and  you  owe  it  to  my 
honor — " 

Every  day  for  a  week  Calyste  called  upon 
Beatrix,  only  to  be  turned  away  by  Antoine,  who 
assumed  an  expression  prepared  for  the  occasion,  to 
say:  "Madame  la  Marquise  is  dangerously  ill." 
Thence  Calyste  drove  to  La  Palferine's,  whose 
valet  replied:  "Monsieur  is  hunting!"  Each  time 
the  Breton  left  a  letter  for  La  Palferine. 

On  the  eighth  day,  Calyste,  summoned  to  an 


BEATRIX  521 

explanation  by  a  line  from  La  Palferine,  found  him 
at  last,  but  he  was  accompanied  by  Maxime  de 
Trailles,  to  whom,  doubtless,  the  younger  rake 
wished  to  demonstrate  his  cunning  by  allowing  him 
to  witness  this  scene. 

"Monsieur  le  Baron,"  said  Charles-Edouard 
calmly,  "here  are  the  six  letters  you  have  done  me 
the  honor  to  write  me;  they  are  intact  and  whole; 
the  seals  have  not  been  broken,  for  1  knew  before- 
hand what  they  probably  contained,  having  learned 
that  you  have  been  looking  for  me  everywhere  since 
the  day  I  watched  you  from  a  window  when  you 
were  at  the  door  of  a  house,  of  which,  on  the  preced- 
ing day,  you  were  at  the  window  and  I  at  the  door. 
It  seemed  to  me  that  I  ought  to  ignore  unseemly  in- 
sults. Between  ourselves,  you  have  too  much  good 
taste  to  wish  a  woman  ill  because  she  has  ceased  to 
love  you.  It's  a  wretched  way  of  winning  back  her 
love,  to  seek  a  quarrel  with  your  favored  rival.  But, 
under  the  existing  circumstances,  your  letters  were 
tainted  with  a  radical  defect — a  nullify  as  the  law- 
yers say.  You  have  too  much  good  sense  to  bear  a 
husband  a  grudge  for  taking  back  his  wife.  Mon- 
sieur de  Rochefide  has  felt  that  his  wife's  position 
lacked  dignity.  You  will  no  longer  find  Madame  de 
Rochefide  on  Rue  de  Courcelles,  six  months  hence 
— next  winter,  let  us  say,  but  at  the  Hotel  de  Roche- 
fide. You  thrust  yourself  very  inconsiderately  into 
the  midst  of  a  reconciliation  between  the  husband 
and  wife,  of  which  you,  yourself,  were  the  original 
cause  by  not  rescuing  Madame  de  Rochefide  from 


522  BEATRIX 

the  humiliation  to  which  she  was  subjected  at  the 
Italiens.  When  we  left  the  theatre,  Beatrix,  to 
whom  I  had  already  been  the  bearer  of  some  friendly 
propositions  from  her  husband,  took  me  in  her  car- 
riage, and  her  first  words  at  that  time  were:  'Go 
and  find  Arthur!'—" 

"My  God!"  cried  Calyste,  "she  was  right;  I 
failed  in  my  devotion." 

"Unluckily,  monsieur,  poor  Arthur  was  living 
with  one  of  those  atrocious  creatures.  La  Schontz, 
who  knew  that  she  was  in  hourly  danger  of  being 
deserted.  Madame  Schontz,  who,  on  the  strength 
of  Beatrix's  complexion,  cherished  the  hope  of  see- 
ing herself  some  day  Marquise  de  Rochefide,  was 
terribly  enraged  when  she  found  her  castles  in 
Spain  razed  to  the  ground,  and  she  determined  to  be 
revenged  upon  the  husband  and  wife  at  a  single 
blow!  Those  women,  monsieur,  will  put  out  one 
of  their  own  eyes  for  the  sake  of  putting  out  both  of 
their  enemy's;  La  Schontz,  who  has  left  Paris,  has 
put  out  six ! — And  if  I  had  been  imprudent  enough 
to  love  Beatrix,  she  would  have  had  eight  to  her 
credit. — You  must  have  noticed  that  you  need  the 
attention  of  an  oculist — " 

Maxime  could  not  restrain  a  smile  at  the  change 
in  Calyste's  face  which  turned  as  pale  as  death 
when  his  eyes  were  opened  to  the  plight  he 
was  in. 

"Would  you  believe,  Monsieur  le  Baron,  that  that 
despicable  woman  has  given  her  hand  to  the  man 
who  furnished  her  with  the  means  of  revenge.? — 


BEATRIX  523 

Oh!  these  women! — You  understand,  now,  why 
Beatrix  has  gone  into  retirement  for  a  few  months 
with  Arthur  at  Nogent-sur-Marne,  where  they  have 
a  delightful  little  house;  they  are  recovering  their 
sight  there.  During  their  absence,  their  hotel  is  to 
be  refurnished  and  renovated  throughout,  and  the 
marchioness  intends  to  maintain  a  princely  estab- 
lishment there.  When  one  loves  sincerely  so  noble, 
so  grand,  so  gracious  a  woman  as  she,  the  victim 
of  conjugal  love  at  the  moment  that  she  has  the 
courage  to  return  to  her  duties,  the  part  for  them  to 
play  who  adore  her  as  you  adore  her,  who  admire 
her  as  I  admire  her,  is  to  remain  her  friends,  when 
they  can  no  longer  be  anything  more  than  friends. 
— You  will  be  good  enough  to  pardon  me  if  I  thought 
it  my  duty  to  request  Monsieur  le  Comte  de  Trailles 
to  be  present  as  a  witness  at  this  interview;  but  I 
was  determined  to  set  this  whole  matter  before  you 
plainly.  As  to  myself,  I  desire  especially  to  tell 
you  that,  although  I  may  admire  Madame  de  Roche- 
fide's  intellect,  she  is  extremely  disagreeable  to  me 
as  a  woman." 

"And  this  is  how  our  sweetest  dreams,  our  celes- 
tial passions  end!"  said  Calyste,  crushed  to  earth 
by  such  a  multitude  of  revelations  and  such  com- 
plete disillusionment 

"In  a  fish's  tail,"  cried  Maxime,  "or,  what  is 
worse,  in  a  druggist's  phial !     I  never  heard   of  a^ 
first  love  that  didn't  end  in  some  foolish  way.     Ah! 
Monsieur  le  Baron,  whatever  man  may  have  that 
is  celestial  finds  no  nourishment  except  in  Heaven! 


524  BEATRIX 

— That  is  the  satisfaction  we  roiiSs  have.  1  have 
thought  very  deeply  on  this  question,  monsieur,  as 
you  can  see,  for  I  was  married  yesterday;  I  shall 
be  faithful  to  my  wife,  and  I  urge  you  to  return  to 
Madame  du  Guenic — but — not  for  three  months. 
Do  not  regret  Beatrix;  she  is  the  type  of  the  vain, 
spiritless  creatures,  who  are  flirts  through  vain- 
glory; she  is  Madame  d'Espard  without  her  pro- 
found tact,  the  heartless,  brainless  woman,  who 
wanders  giddily  into  evil.  Madame  de  Rochefide 
loves  only  Madame  de  Rochefide;  she  would  have 
embroiled  you  beyond  remedy  with  Madame  du 
Guenic,  and  would  have  thrown  you  over  without 
remorse ;  in  short,  she  is  as  incomplete  in  vice  as  in 
virtue." 

"I  don't  agree  with  you,  Maxime,"  said  La  Pal- 
ferine;  "she  will  be  the  most  delightful  hostess  in 
Paris." 

Calyste  did  not  take  his  leave  without  exchang- 
ing a  cordial  grasp  of  the  hand  with  Charles- 
Edouard  and  Maxime  de  Trailles,  thanking  them  for 
disposing  of  his  illusions. 

Three  days  later,  the  Duchesse  de  Grandlieu,  who 
had  not  seen  her  daughter  Sabine  since  the  morning 
of  the  conference  just  described,  went  to  her  house 
and  found  Calyste  in  his  bath  and  Sabine  beside 
him  working  upon  articles  for  the  layette  of  the 
expected  newcomer. 

"Well,  well,  what  has  happened  to  you,  my 
children?"  queried  the  good  duchess. 

"Nothing  but  good  things,  dear  mamma,"  Sabine 


BEATRIX  525 

replied,  raising  her  eyes,  beaming  with  happiness, 
to  her  mother's  face;  "we  have  played  the  fable  of 
the  Two  Pigeons  !  that  is  all. 

Calyste  took  his  wife's  hand  and  pressed  it  ten- 
derly. 

1838-1844. 
H 


LIST  OF    ETCHINGS 


VOLUME  XXI 

PAGE 

AT  FELICITE'S Fronts. 

LES  TOUCHES  DISCUSSED  AT  DU  GUENIC'S   ....  88 

IN  THE  GARDEN  AT  LES  TOUCHES 244 

FROM  SABINE  TO  HER  MOTHER 368 

SABINE  AND  CALYSTE  AT  HOME 424 


21  N.  &  R.,  Bea.  527 


I 


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